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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536432">The Sweater Curse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/call_lightning/pseuds/call_lightning'>call_lightning</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, And we love them for it, Angst and Fluff, Blood and Injury, Coming Out, Felix is a bit of an asshole: the fic, Getting Together, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Knitting, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentioned Pregnancy, Superstition, Sylvain is a bit of an idiot: the fic, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:15:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,991</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536432</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/call_lightning/pseuds/call_lightning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sweater curse” (definition), aka. “curse of the love sweater”: A term used by knitters to describe the belief that if a knitter gives a sweater to a significant other, it will lead to the recipient breaking up with the knitter. In an alternative formulation of the myth, the relationship will end before the sweater is ever completed.</p><p>Felix tries to knit Sylvain a sweater, despite the old wives’ tales about a curse. </p><p>It takes him a while; ten years, to be exact. </p><p>This is how it goes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth, minor Annette/Mercedes, minor Claude/Dimitri - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>101</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Felix first learns how to knit when he is twelve years old. </p><p>Knitting is absolutely not something that he would have ever sought out on his own, but after he breaks his ankle falling off a horse (that he didn’t even want to be riding in the first place) and is bedridden for six horrible weeks, he starts to go a little stir-crazy. One of the maids attending to him, Georgina, takes pity on his restless fidgeting about a week and a half in, after he's read every interesting book in his room and done enough puzzles to make him go cross-eyed.</p><p>It takes some time for him to accept the spare set of needles she offers him from the basket she keeps with her on her shifts in his room, because knitting is a <em> girly </em> thing, and Felix has distanced himself from those ever since Glenn helped him burn his dresses in protest at age seven. He eventually warms up to the idea once she makes the point that plenty of men know how to knit, how it’s a practical skill, and if he couldn’t train outside, he could at least practice his dexterity with <em> something </em> sharp until his ankle healed. </p><p>His first attempts are clumsy, lumpy things, picked out more times than he could count. Felix is nothing if not a dedicated practitioner when he puts his mind to something, however, and he doggedly spends the next few weeks knitting and re-knitting the same small square until Georgina praises his finished, mostly lump-free potholder. Once his ankle is finally deemed sufficiently healed and the estate physician allows him to resume physical activity, Felix shows up the very next morning to the training grounds with a set of carefully knitted new socks tucked into his boots.</p><p>—</p><p>“You know,” Sylvain says one day, hanging upside-down on a pine tree branch outside the Fraldarius manor, “you haven’t knitted me anything yet.” </p><p>Felix pauses in his latest project, a deep green hat for Glenn, and tilts his head up against the tree trunk, cocking an eyebrow. </p><p>“So?” </p><p>“Fe, seriously, you made Ingrid that scarf, and Dimitri those socks, and now you’re making Glenn something, but you haven’t made a single thing for me! Am I just not special enough for you?”</p><p>Even oriented in the opposite direction, Sylvain’s exaggerated pout is evident. Felix sets his needles in his lap, sighing as he holds up fingers to tick off. </p><p>“You never wear scarves because you run as hot as a furnace, knitted socks would be too thick to fit in your riding boots, and you’d never want to ruin the time you spend on your hair with a <em> hat</em>. What could I even make you?” </p><p>“Sheesh, okay, I don’t know,” Sylvain says. “What about a sweater? I wear sweaters!”</p><p>Felix shakes his head vigorously, his hair falling out of the small ponytail he’s started attempting to wear.  </p><p>“No. No way. Haven’t you heard of the curse?” </p><p>“What, a cursed sweater? Will I be haunted by the ghosts of all the sheep who died to make it?” </p><p>“You idiot, you don’t kill sheep to make yarn.” Felix chucks a pinecone at Sylvain, nailing him in the stomach. The redhead pretends to have been struck with a great force in the gut, reeling back, and flipping himself down. He ends up sitting cross-legged under the tree across from Felix, close enough for their knees to touch. </p><p>“The <em> actual </em>sweater curse means that whenever you knit a sweater for someone, by the time you finish it, you won’t like each other anymore.” Felix looks down at his yarn and scowls. “Also, it sounds really fucking hard. There’s like, sizing and stuff you have to figure out. I’ll just make you a blanket.” </p><p>“Hey! Felix, come on!” Sylvain reaches out and takes his hands. “That’s bullshit, the curse won’t apply to me.” </p><p>Felix feels a warm heat rise in his face despite his best efforts. “You can’t charm your way out of a curse like you do our lessons, Syl.” </p><p>“No, that’s not what I mean.” Sylvain says, squeezing his hands. He looks him in the eyes, bright with the assured confidence of someone with the whole future ahead of them. “The curse won’t work because there’s nothing in the whole world that would make me not like you anymore.” </p><p>—</p><p>It takes Felix ages to decide on just a color of wool for Sylvain, but he ultimately settles on some deep teal skeins that a woman in the nearby village makes, dyed with flowers native to Fraldarius territory. He buys her entire stock in a last-minute burst, just in case he makes any mistakes. </p><p>It takes him even longer to start laying out the gauge and pattern for the sweater with measurements that an amused Georgina procures from Sylvain under the pretense of updating the manor’s tailor. He sits on the rug by the parlor fireplace every night, tongue pressed between his teeth as he slowly starts the long blocks that will make up the torso of the sweater. Sometimes Glenn joins him, propping his feet up on a nearby stool as he writes letters or bitches about his latest training, never once bringing up who the sweater is intended for. </p><p>Then Duscur happens, the fireplace is extinguished, the parlor abandoned, and the incomplete sweater is shoved to the bottom of a trunk to grow cold. </p><p>—</p><p>Felix packs for the Officer’s Academy like he packs for everything else in his life: by throwing clothes and objects haphazardly into bags and travel trunks until he has to practically sit on them to close them properly. </p><p>It’s as he’s opening the last trunk in his room to evaluate its contents that he spies it, the forgotten bag of knitting resting amidst old blankets and discarded toys. He has to push a few puzzles and picture books out of the way to pull it out entirely, and contemplates the meager knitted squares, thinking.</p><p>He hasn’t seen his friend since the day of Glenn’s funeral, nearly three years ago, when Felix had run off halfway through the service in tears. In the end, it wasn’t his father who came looking for him, or the teary messes Dimitri and Ingrid, who had shuffled through the service like mild-mannered zombies. </p><p>Instead, Sylvain had been the one to find Felix, curled up on a chair in the darkened parlor. He had been the one to hold him, silently, as Felix finally allowed himself to break into a heaving, sobbing mess, getting tears and snot all over Sylvain’s formalwear and the sling he wore on his arm.</p><p>(Felix had been too submerged in grief to ask him what had happened to it, but like most of Sylvain’s childhood injuries, he imagines that his friend would just have shrugged the question off anyway.) </p><p>Felix runs a timeline through his head, calculating the moons between now and Garland Moon. If he starts soon, he thinks, there’s a good chance that he could have a finished sweater by Sylvain’s birthday.</p><p>Of course, there’s always a chance that his friend could decide he wants nothing more to do with Felix. After all, he had rarely responded to Sylvain’s letters over the years. They came frequently after Glenn’s funeral, inquiring after Felix’s daily life and in turn regaling him with stories about his riding lessons and constant strikeouts when flirting with whatever new girl had caught his eye. Felix had hated those letters most of all, and eventually, after moons of his curt responses (or lack thereof), Sylvain’s letters faltered, then stopped arriving altogether. </p><p>Felix’s stomach already was churning at the thought of having to face his friends again after his self-isolation, especially Dimitri, but, holding the hopeful starting blocks of the sweater in his hands, it flips even more at the idea of Sylvain’s potential indifference towards him. </p><p>In the end though, for some reason that Felix can’t find the words to explain, the bag of knitting is placed gently among the rest of his packed belongings, and joins him on the long carriage ride south. </p><p>—</p><p>Despite his initial concerns, his friends greet him at Garreg Mach as if no time had passed at all, to a degree that makes him almost suspicious. </p><p>Ingrid seems delighted to see him, inviting him to the dining hall almost immediately to catch up. The boar also expresses a similar delight, but Felix is smart enough to see through <em> that </em> façade, at least, and cooly sidesteps the prince’s clumsy attempts at an embrace. Sylvain, though...Sylvain feels like coming home, right down to the scent of pine and honey that envelops him when he is swept up, protesting anyway, into a hug. </p><p>Felix returns to a dorm room that he’s still getting used to after the end of their first day of classes, where their fascinating new professor had paired him and Sylvain up on the training grounds to start. Facing off against his friend evoked intensely familiar memories, except for the fact that Felix now has to dodge his strikes earlier than usual because of how much taller Sylvain has grown. </p><p>Sylvain had thrown himself exuberantly, if somewhat sloppily, into their matches, losing over and over to Felix’s sword but cheerily letting himself be pulled up by an offered hand anyway all afternoon. The boar had felt the need to open his big, lying mouth to praise Felix, and got about two insufferable sentences in before uttering the phrase, “will be a wonderful Duke.” </p><p>It was only Sylvain’s loudly cleared throat and long-fingered hand tugging him in the opposite direction for another round that kept Felix from charging at the prince with nothing but a wooden sword. </p><p>“Don’t listen to him,” he had said to Felix as he blocked another one of his jabs with his lance. “His Highness is still working on his ability to not step in it, and he doesn’t have the lightest feet.” </p><p>Sylvain’s footwork then stumbled as Felix gave a particularly quick, forceful swipe towards his left side, and the trip allowed him to knock the lance out of his hands with the downwards thrust of an elbow. </p><p>“I don’t care what the boar says to me,” he’d said, scowling. “Every other word that comes out of his mouth is a lie anyway.” </p><p>Sylvain leaned down to pick the training weapon back up, chuckling. “We all need faster feet to catch up with you, Fe.” </p><p>“Tch. You need to cover your flanks better.” </p><p>“Lucky for me I’ve got the best-looking teacher in the whole school, then, huh?” </p><p>Felix rolled his eyes. “Day one and you’re hitting on our professor? Give it a rest, Gautier.” </p><p>“Who said anything about the Professor?” Sylvain winked at him before squaring up into another opening stance. “One more round?” </p><p>A growing flush had started from under Felix’s collar, spreading down to what felt like his toes. He shook his head instead, spun the sword around in his hand, and settled into a stance of his own. “Make it two.” </p><p>—</p><p>As Felix continues unpacking, his brain idly replays those matches, trying to calculate how much longer Sylvain’s arms were now, not to mention how his hands looked curled around the wood of the training lance. His eye catches a bright pop of teal poking out from underneath a pile of clothes in his half-unpacked trunk. Before he can think, Felix finds himself moving towards the pile, digging out the small bag of wool and needles, untangling a few pieces from one another, and examining the squares. A faded piece of paper falls out of the bag as he shakes it, scrawled with numbers and a few diagrams in his messy handwriting and Georgina’s careful lines, respectively. He clutches it in one hand, thinking. </p><p>It takes an embarrassingly short amount of time (if he had stopped to consider it, which he adamantly does not) for him to pick up the needles, count the rows left in a square under his breath, and then begin to add a new one, hands slipping into a mechanical, familiar rhythm. </p><p>The hours slip by without him noticing, the sun setting into darkness through the dorm’s tiny window, until he finally has to pause his work to light a few candles to see. He’s about halfway through the stitches on the collar at this point, and his head spins a bit while shaking off the intense concentration he’d maintained towards keeping it even. </p><p>As he puts away the matches, he hears the slam of a door closing through the wall next to him. It’s Sylvain’s room, he realizes with a sinking feeling, where the sound comes from, and the noises don’t stop there. </p><p>He can hear a girl’s high-pitched giggle, a few thumping noises, and then, to Felix’s horror, the telltale creaking of a dorm bed’s shitty springs. </p><p>The rush of ice through his veins freezing him in place is interrupted by a few globs of wax dripping down from the candle that he doesn’t realize he’s still holding. He automatically jerks his hand away, waving it in the air to cool with a grimace. The noises still haven’t stopped. There’s more laughter, including, Goddess, <em> Sylvain’s </em>laugh this time, more creaking, and then, a gasp followed by a drawn-out moan. </p><p>An ooze of hot, embarrassed anger to match the candle wax begins to make its way through him as he listens to them continue, while the pieces of the sweater wait patiently for him on his bed. He could swear that the things were mocking him, taunting his childish devotion and his foolish, unattainable desires. How could he be so <em> stupid</em>? </p><p>He doesn’t even bother to put the knitting back into its bag; instead he just sweeps it into his arms and dumps the whole pile unceremoniously back into his trunk. The next day, he swears to himself, he’ll pick the whole thing apart and use the yarn for something much more practical. </p><p>The next day comes and goes without him touching the sweater. A week follows, then two weeks, and he still stares down the pile of knitting every night, trying to will himself to unravel it. </p><p>Like everything else involving Sylvain, he’s too weak to keep himself away. By the third week, he finally caves and spends the majority of the evening piecing together blocks of the back portion, connecting them with an uneven collar that he had slipped up the count on. He tries not to focus too much on it. There’s a very small chance Sylvain will actually even see the sweater, he tells himself, he’s just going to finish it just to see if he can. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be <em> done</em>, and then he can finally put it out of his sight for good. </p><p>That’s what he tells himself. He hopes it’s true.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Happy New Year!! Have some Sylvix where Felix steadfastly refuses to admit that gift-giving is one of his love languages, bless his heart.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once Felix dedicates himself to finishing the sweater as fast as possible, he works on it everywhere, at least, everywhere that isn’t the training grounds or Sylvain’s presence. </p><p>He’s currently perched on a barrel in the stables as Ingrid brushes a pegasus’s glossy mane, spitting out pieces of hay as he works his way down a sleeve and rants about the latest girl Sylvain had brought back. </p><p>“And she snorted when she laughed, it was so loud I could hear it through the door, and he actually told her it was cute! He’s such a fucking liar sometimes, I can’t stand it.”</p><p>“Mhm,” Ingrid hums as she reaches over to grab a few sugar cubes. “Is this one the blonde, or the redhead?” </p><p>“I think it’s the blonde one...wait, there’s a redhead too?” </p><p>Ingrid grimaces. “Oh. You didn’t know about that one?” </p><p>Felix tosses his needles onto the stable floor. They glint back at him mockingly from amidst the dust and hay. “That insatiable idiot, he said he’d at least stop dating more than one person at once, he’s going to get some kind of disease at this rate- <em> what,</em> Ingrid?” </p><p>He follows her winced gaze to the other sleeve of the sweater...currently between the teeth of her pegasus, being chewed sedately. Felix’s anger bubbles up to the point where he feels like he’s going to scream. He tugs the sleeve away roughly, but a few leftover teal strands cling to the stupid animal’s chin. </p><p>“Ugh. You’re a huge help, thanks, Ing,” he scoffs, and shoves the sweater into his bag, turning to march away from the building. He needs to hit something with a sword as hard as possible. Maybe the boar will spar with him, if he’s not too busy following the Professor around like a lost puppy. “I don’t know why I even try.” </p><p>“You could try talking to him!” Ingrid calls after him as she fades into the distance. </p><p>He ignores her, like he always does.</p><p>—</p><p>“You didn’t tell us that you knew how to knit, Felix,” Mercedes says cheerfully from his doorway a few weeks later. </p><p>“I don’t.” Felix’s reply is brusque, not looking up as his hands maneuver his needles through a side seam. There’s a hole a few rows up where he missed a few stitches, but he’s decided just to leave it where it is. He’s so close to finishing this side. He just wants to get it done. Then, just maybe, he can stop thinking about Sylvain’s dumb biceps and how they’d fit into the sweater sleeves, if they would stretch it out or not, because did his muscles get larger with the rest of him? <em> Ugh</em>. He needed to cut it out. </p><p>“Whoever told you that I do is a liar, and you shouldn’t listen to anything she says.” </p><p>“Come on, Felix!” Annette pokes her head around Mercedes’s side with her best pleading expression. “We’re going to embroider in Mercie’s room, and Bernadetta is actually going to leave her dorm to do it with us, and we want you to join us!” </p><p>“No.” Felix shakes his head. “I’m not a girl, Annie. I’m not joining your little crafting club.” </p><p>“Don’t be rude, Felix,” Mercedes chides. He actually shrinks back a bit at her gentle disapproval. It always amazed (and irritated) him how much power that the woman managed to exude through even the lightest amount of effort. “We know you’re not a girl. We want to spend time with you because we’re friends, and that’s what friends do.”</p><p>“Pleeeease, Felix?” Annette hops up and down a little. “It’ll be fun! Bernie’s bringing cake!”</p><p>“Fine.” He stabs his needles into a skein of yarn with a little more force than is necessary, and tosses the sweater into its bag. “I’ll come. But I’m not eating any cake.”</p><p>He leaves Mercedes’s room many hours later, with the right sweater side completed and a tiny teal flower stitched over the hole under the armpit, courtesy of Bernadetta. Just as he’s shut the door to begin the walk back to his dorm, he almost runs face-first into Sylvain. His friend sways slightly on his feet in response, giggling and leaning against the wall to keep from toppling over. </p><p>“Whoa! Hey, Fe, fancy seeing you here! What kept you out so late?” </p><p>Sylvain smells like cheap whiskey and something floral underneath it, a sickly false imitation of roses. Felix tries to sidestep him, but is blocked by his friend lurching back upright towards him.</p><p>“None of your business,” Felix snaps back. “Get out of my way.” </p><p>Sylvain peers with slightly glassy eyes behind him at the room he had just exited. “Isn’t that Mercedes’s room? Heyyy, nice one, man, getting it on with a holy woman, that’s impressive stuff, you gotta tell me what- ow!”</p><p>He rubs his arm from where Felix shoves him aside, finally shouldering his way past him. “I said get out of my <em>way</em>, Sylvain, you dickhead. Why do you assume being in a girl’s room automatically assumes you’re fucking, just because it’s all <em> you </em> do- stop laughing!”</p><p>Sylvain is cracking up, leaning heavily onto Felix’s shoulder. He smells even stronger up close, and Felix has to clench his hands into fists to keep from shoving him again. </p><p>“What’s in the bag, then, Fe? A change of clothes? Chocolates? Flowers? Any instruments you might have used on a lady friend, huh?” Sylvain reaches a hand out towards the bag. It’s ludicrously easy for Felix to yank it out of his clumsy reach, and he spins around, holding it tight to his chest, which is rising and falling with quickening, furious breaths. </p><p>“I’m fucking <em> gay</em>, you fucking asshole, so drop it, okay?” The words hiss out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he bites his tongue at the dumbstruck expression spreading over Sylvain’s face, looking like Felix had kicked him.</p><p>“Felix, I...didn’t know…”</p><p>“Of course you didn’t,” he spits, angrily. He feels his face heating up, flushing all the way down his neck. “You never asked. You never <em> do,</em> you inconsiderate bastard, you just assume everyone’s just as obsessed with the opposite sex as you.” </p><p>Sylvain’s eyebrows knit together in what looks like confusion. Probably disgust, Felix thinks. Who wouldn’t be disgusted with him, especially his heterosexual to the point of near-caricature friend?</p><p>He doesn’t allow himself to say another word, just pivots on a heel, striding away as fast as he can down the corridor. When he turns the corner, he chucks the bag with all of his might into a nearby cluster of bushes before continuing on.</p><p>He can vaguely hear Sylvain shouting out his name after him through the thundering of his pulse in his ears. </p><p>He ignores him, too. </p><p>—</p><p>The training ground has been empty all morning and for the majority of the early afternoon, save for Felix and a cadre of beaten training dummies. A couple people have walked through the doors, seen his demeanor and the dark mood rippling like a miasma out from him, and turned right back around and left. Even Caspar, in a rare burst of insight beyond his normal enthusiastic tactlessness, notices Felix’s sour demeanor and deigns to leave him alone. </p><p>So when Felix hears the creak of the doors at first, he ignores it. He instead slashes again at a target, his Crest activating for the fourth time in an hour and causing the training sword in his hands to shatter. He tosses the broken pieces to the ground in disgust. Maybe he should just move to live steel and risk breaking a few iron weapons just to save time, he considers. It’s only then that he hears a small cough behind him- someone clearing their throat by the doors. The person who had entered had apparently not yet left. </p><p>For some reason, he isn’t surprised to see who it is.</p><p>Sylvain scuffs a foot by a pillar near the doors, giving him a small wave. “Hey, Fe.” </p><p>Felix crosses his arms and looks at him, but doesn’t respond. When Sylvain hesitates, Felix rolls his eyes in exasperation and turns back to the rack of swords. “Speak your piece or get out, Gautier.”</p><p>“I brought you a sandwich.”</p><p>Felix pivots to see him holding out a wrapped bundle of food.</p><p>“I got some of those spiced nuts you like too.” </p><p>He wants to ignore him and go back to training so, so badly, but his stomach growls loudly and claws against his ribs at the mention of food. Huh. He guessed he skipped breakfast...and lunch...and how close was it to dinner? </p><p>(Not for the first time, Felix considers the potential benefits of trying to figure out how to pulverize all the food he needed for the day into some type of slurry that he could drink once and get mealtimes over with.)</p><p>Sylvain makes a knowing face at the noise. “Yeah, I figured you hadn’t eaten much. Take a break, Fe.”</p><p>Felix frowns, and snatches the bundle out of Sylvain’s hands without speaking to him, sitting down on the raised side of the training floor to attack the sandwich. Automatically, he picks out the pieces of tomato and lettuce with his hands and drops them in the dirt. </p><p>(His father always said that he ate like a starving animal. Felix had ripped apart half a rotisserie chicken with his hands when he had said that for the first time, and tucked into it saying he’d much rather eat like an animal than a lady.)</p><p>Sylvain hesitates, finally sitting down next to him. </p><p>“I want to apologize for last night,” he says, looking down at his hands. He rubs a thumb reflexively across a callus on his palm as he talks and Felix’s eyes track that as he shoves a handful of almonds into his mouth, not wanting to linger on his face.</p><p>“I shouldn’t have been so invasive,” Sylvain says, “I was drunk and stupid, and I’m sorry I pushed you. And I’m sorry I insinuated anything happened between you and Mercedes. That wasn’t fair to you or her.” </p><p>Felix sets the sandwich crusts down, still chewing. Sylvain, unprompted, passes him a waterskin. He takes a long drink, watching Sylvain fidget more, before responding. </p><p>“What about...the other thing?”</p><p>“What other thing?”</p><p>Felix keeps his gaze firmly fixed on his boots and the limp pieces of vegetable on the ground. A small line of ants has already begun to march its way towards the tomato slice. “The part when...when I told you I’m, you know…”</p><p>“What about it?” </p><p>Sylvain sounds so genuinely confused that Felix momentarily forgets his self-imposed restriction has to look up at his face in surprise. He sees his eyebrows raised, a furrowed brow forming over a concerned expression.</p><p>“Did you think that I would care that you’re gay, Fe? What, did you think I was going to be one of those straight dudes who freaks out and thinks that you have a crush on me, or something?” </p><p>Felix’s face burns all the way to the tips of his ears. “I <em> don’t </em> have a crush on you,” he chokes out, even as his mind sings back <em> “liar, liar, liar” </em> at him. </p><p>Sylvain laughs. “Well, duh. We’re friends, man! Best friends. Even though I do stupid, inconsiderate shit all the time and you kick my ass nine ways to hell every other training session. Nothing’s changing that.”</p><p>Felix sets the rest of his food aside, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He hates how small his voice sounds as he responds. “So it really doesn’t bother you? You still want to be friends with me?”</p><p>“Hey, come on, Felix.” Sylvain swings an arm around his shoulders, pressing his familiar weight in next to him. It settles around Felix like the pressure at the bottom of a lake, holding him suspended entirely. “Remember what I told you? There’s nothing in the whole world that would make me not like you anymore.” </p><p>“Oh great,” Felix deadpans, but he can feel the beginnings of a smile itch at his face. “Then I’m stuck with you.”</p><p>He feels the hand on the opposite side of his shoulder flick his ear playfully. “You know it.” Sylvain grins. “Till the day we die, babe.” </p><p>—</p><p>Felix hurries across the courtyard from the training hall after Sylvain heads off to stable duty. He quickly makes his way to Mercedes’s door, then begins retracing his steps from the previous night until he finds the row of hedges that he had thrown his bag of knitting into. </p><p>As he drops to his knees in the dirt and begins to dig through the tight wall of branches and leaves, horrific visions flash through his head of the half-finished sweater covered in mud, or overrun by beetles, or worms. He didn’t ever consider that the curse would have taken the form of his own goddess-damned hotheadedness, but he has a sinking feeling that it had. </p><p>He pushes deeper into the bushes, feeling sharper bits of the plants catch and scrape his skin, smearing green stains onto his white shirtsleeves. The bag is nowhere to be found. He even checks the bushes to the right and left of the one he originally was looking in, but there’s nothing, not even a scrap of yarn to indicate that the bag has ever been there at all. Strands of hair slip out of his already loose ponytail, and dirt sticks to the layer of sweat he had already accumulated from training for most of the day. His breathing speeds up, and he ends up ripping a whole chunk out of a hedge in desperation. Still nothing. He sits back on his heels in defeat, tossing the clump of leaves on the ground next to him. The sweater was gone for good, probably carried off by some animal or bird for its nest. </p><p>For the first time in years, hot tears begin to sting at the corners of his eyes and threaten to fall.</p><p>A shadow suddenly falls across the wall in front of him, blocking the setting sun, and he whips around on his knees in a huff. “Go <em>away</em>,” he snaps up at whoever it is.</p><p>The Professor’s sleeves dangle down in front of him as she extends a hand towards him. She pulls him up with ease as he stammers out a hasty apology. Felix wipes hurriedly at his eyes with a grungy sleeve, smearing the dirt and grass stains on it like a ruined oil painting.</p><p>“Professor, I’m sorry, I...”</p><p>Before he can get any further, she shakes her head at him, reaches into her cape, and pulls out a very familiar bag. His knitting needles pile out of the top of it, shining in the orange-hued fading daylight. Shocked, he can’t do anything else but take it from her when she wordlessly thrusts it in his direction. The bag doesn’t seem to have a spot of dirt on it, and when he unties it to check the contents, they seem undisturbed as well.</p><p>“I...how did you find this, where did you-”</p><p>The Professor raises an eyebrow at him, like he appears foolish for questioning why someone like her would spend her time digging through monastery bushes.</p><p>“Be more careful about where you leave things,” is all she says, before turning and breaking into a run along the stone path heading to the stables, her odd cape billowing behind her in the wind. </p><p>—</p><p>The bag of knitting gets placed securely at the back of his closet after that day, and Felix turns out to be too busy running himself ragged in the next couple of months between training, trying to keep the boar from losing it entirely after Remire, and the escalating events that follow. In fact, he doesn’t even end up looking at the bag again until the night before Edelgard’s forces are set to attack the monastery. </p><p>He finds it when cleaning out his things, shoving what he can into his pack to take with him if they end up needing to evacuate. Felix has the uncomfortable feeling that they probably will. He leaves most of his uniforms hanging, only taking a few changes of clothes and the standard gear he takes on missions. There are only a few extraneous things he has in his room not related to his weapons: books, a dark blue blanket, and a couple unanswered letters from his father. He leaves those all in a trunk in the corner. </p><p>The knitting, though, is what gives him pause. He sits on the floor with the closet door open for a long time, staring into it with what he feels should be contemplation, but turns out to be more of a drifting sense of dread. The bag sits across from him as a silent observer. It turns out, inanimate objects aren’t great at making cases for themselves why they should stay. </p><p>A knock sounds at his door, as he sits there- two short, quick raps, a pattern that he knows well. He stands, knees protesting after over an hour seated on the floor, to open it. </p><p>“Hey, Felix.”</p><p>Sylvain is in his sleep clothes, just simple pants and a loose tunic, and the bright copper glow of his hair is dulled to brass under the dim light of a new moon. He looks unsure, shifting from foot to foot in the doorway. His expression reflects the same sleepless worry that Felix has been trying to tamp down in himself all night. </p><p>“You need to get some sleep, Sylvain,” Felix says, but he remains in the doorway, holding it open. “There’s a lot happening tomorrow, and you need your rest.”</p><p>Sylvain runs his hand through his hair sheepishly. Without its normal styled precision, it falls to curl in soft choppy parentheses around his face. “Yeah, well, uh...that’s kind of my problem? I can’t sleep.” </p><p>“Get some warm milk or whatever, then,” Felix says, flatly, sarcasm bleeding in. (He doesn’t bring up the obvious fact that <em> he </em> is also awake at the late hour.) He goes to shut the door. </p><p>“No! Wait!” Sylvain sticks a foot out to keep it from closing all the way. “I...can I sleep here? With you?” </p><p>Twin waves of anger and delight crash into each other in Felix’s brain at those words. He whips the door back open, letting it bang against the stones on the opposite side. “Are you actually <em> propositioning </em> me right now?” </p><p>Sylvain holds up his hands, shaking his head with wide eyes. “No! I swear! I just meant, like, well...we always share a tent when we go on missions, right?” </p><p>Felix crosses his arms, scowling at him. “Yeah, because no one else will deal with your snoring up close.” </p><p>“Yeah, alright, fair. But, I guess I got kind of used to having you there before any sort of battle, right? It...kind of calms me down to know that someone’s there, you know? That you’ll be there the next day with me.” </p><p>His face draws in a bit, his normally wide expressive mouth pinching at the corners. Felix shoves the part of his brain that wants to press kiss after kiss to them into a dark, endless pit.</p><p>“And, we’re probably going to have to fight tomorrow, and I’m just freaking out a bit, and you just...you just kind of ground me out. You were so good at that when we were kids.” </p><p>Felix looks at Sylvain, who looks like he wants to keep rambling, but stops and bites his lip as he waits for his response. Without his sharp jacket or the glow of the sun sinking into his skin he seems much smaller, younger, almost. </p><p>Felix finds himself stepping aside without a second thought. “Yeah, okay. We both probably need some rest.” </p><p>Sylvain’s shoulders sink in relief. He follows him back into his room, allowing Felix to shut the door behind him. Felix takes the opportunity to kick his closet doors shut as well before Sylvain can notice the lone bag remaining at the bottom, and watches his friend lean against the wall to slip off his boots, placing them neatly next to the door. </p><p>“The dorm beds aren’t really made for two people,” he says. </p><p>Sylvain nods quickly. “It’s fine, I’ll sleep on the floor, or in a chair-”</p><p>Felix cuts him off. “Did I say that?” He slips under the covers, scooting over and pulling them back a bit. “Come on, just get in the damn bed.” </p><p>He wishes that he didn’t drink in the sight of a very relieved, smiling Sylvain lifting his bedsheets to slide into bed next to him, trying to commit the image to memory. He wishes that he could ignore the exuberant joy that his nervous system emits at the warm, solid presence pressed up against him, at the scent of lingering pine cologne sinking into his pillows. He tries his damndest, he really does, turning his back to Sylvain to face the wall, tensing and curling up tight with only inches between the stone and his face, trying to put as much space between them as possible. </p><p>He can’t hold the position forever, but he’s never been one to give up easy. Sylvain, to his credit, doesn’t say a single word, and doesn’t make a single move. He just lays on his back, hands folded on his stomach while his chest moves at a steady pace up and down. </p><p>The sheer calmness he radiates is unfortunately having the opposite effect on Felix. He tries to maintain the tension in his body, to keep the scant amount of space between their forms as he twists and turns on a minute axis in an attempt to get more comfortable. </p><p>An hour passes, or three, or maybe only five minutes...Felix isn’t exactly sure. As he twists around for what feels like the millionth time, he feels a hand settle on his back, and he freezes. </p><p>“Fe.” Sylvain’s voice radiates through his torso, through the bed and into Felix’s entire being. “Hey. Come here.” </p><p>He holds his arms out away from his chest, motioning for Felix to come closer, and, like a moth to a flame, he can’t help but be drawn in. He flips over for a final time, and, after a brief hesitation, scoots closer to Sylvain’s side to curl against him, laying his head on his chest in the same way he used to when they were children. Sylvain’s arms settle around him, warm and heavy, and Felix immediately feels all nervous energy evaporate from his body, replaced with bone-deep comfort. </p><p>He can almost feel, rather than hear Sylvain’s quiet voice in the dark, the same volume they used to share confessions and secrets with years ago in this position. “Do you think Edelgard’s going to take the monastery? Do you think we’ll need to evacuate?” </p><p>Felix exhales. “I don’t think it’s wise to concede a fight before you even have it,” he says. “But I also think it’s stupid to not take into account the information you have. And our information says that there’s a lot of fucking troops out there waiting for us.” </p><p>“If we have to leave,” Sylvain says, nearly at a whisper, “we’ll have to go back to our territories right?” </p><p>“Most likely.” </p><p>“Then stay close to me, okay? We’ll probably need each other and our battalions on the road going north if things get as bad as they’re promising to.” </p><p>Felix tilts his head up. The top of his head brushes against Sylvain’s chin, which he tucks back down against him, reflexively. “What about the boar? You’ve seen what he’s like now. He’ll try and wade through the whole Imperial army just to get within sight of Edelgard.”</p><p>“The Professor and Dedue will be with Dimitri,” Sylvain says, decisively. “They can hold him back. I need you to stay alive, first and foremost, okay? I won’t be able to...to make it back to Faerghus without you.” </p><p>Curled onto the island of the dorm bed in a never-ending sea of night, the concepts of their homeland, of the upcoming war, and even the approaching dawn seem miles away. Felix unconsciously clings to the person adrift with him, feeling the soft linen of his nightshirt fold in his hands and wrap around him. </p><p>“We’ll make it out,” he promises, and the words seem to hang in the air like a heat haze. “We’ll survive.” </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"Hey Felix, can I have your number?"<br/>Felix, visibly texting: "I don't have a phone."</p><p>Next chapter should be up next week! Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey! Just a heads-up: I added a few tags on this to include some of the more mature subject matter we’re getting into post-timeskip, most notably mentions of sex/sexual acts (but no explicit scenes), and battlefield injuries. If I missed anything that you think I should add, please let me know!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cathedral is burning. </p><p>The horns of retreat sound when the third beast appears amidst Imperial ranks, and Felix, while holding out longer than most of the front line knights, is eventually forced to order his battalion to retreat. As they move at double time in the direction of the rest of the Blue Lions, he stops to watch the smoke billowing from the church, and the battering rams that are beginning to shatter parts of the nearby walls. A cold shock that has nothing to do with the battle around him hits as he remembers his bag of knitting- still in its resting place inside his closet. </p><p>Before he can reconsider or think twice, his legs are moving him back onto the grounds toward the dormitory buildings, as he shouts for his soldiers to continue on without him. He knows he’s fast, faster than most, and is more familiar than anyone else when it comes to lacking other soldiers as backup. If he’s quick, he can make it there, grab the bag, and make it back before anyone realizes he’s gone.</p><p>He unsheathes his sword and quickly darts down the cracking pathways, pulling the high collar of his shirt up over his nose and mouth to block out some of the smoke that’s beginning to cover the entire complex. </p><p>A heavy impact blows out part of a stone wall just feet in front of him, and he just barely manages to duck and avoid the flying pieces of stone that are hurled towards him. Fleeing monks, panicking students, and the last few merchants left within the monastery walls stream around him as he moves as swiftly as he can to reach his dorm room. The entrance to the building is just feet away, but he can see a few fallen timbers blocking the doorway.</p><p>Felix sheaths his sword, preparing to climb through them. He just needs to reach the stairs, he thinks, just through these and a bit further. </p><p>“Felix!”</p><p>Before he can move any closer, a black horse appears, rearing in between Felix and the dormitory buildings. He skids to a surprised halt, and his hand automatically goes back to his sword hilt before he sees its rider.  </p><p>Dressed in full armor, a blood-streaked Lance of Ruin glowing brightly strapped to his back creating a sort of halo effect, framing his red hair in an even more crimson glow, Sylvain almost looks like some kind of avenging angel more suited for the burning cathedral’s stained glass. He reaches down a gauntleted hand. Up close, Felix can see dents in his armor, and bits of his saddle smoking from a residual spell. </p><p>“Get on,” Sylvain urges, motioning behind him. “They’ve breached the gates! We don’t have much time, we have to get out of here.”</p><p>Felix tries to dodge around the horse, but Sylvain anticipates his movement, and turns to block his path again. </p><p>“Just one second,” Felix says, and tries to move past him again. “I forgot something, give me one second, I have to get up-”</p><p>“Fe, don't be difficult, there’s no time,” Sylvain says, and Felix can hear the desperation in his voice, scratchy and fearful. “They’ll be here any minute, and the building’s probably on its way to collapsing, we have to go.” </p><p>“Move, Sylvain!” </p><p>He hates how desperate his own voice sounds as it cracks on the last syllable. “I’ll be fine, I need to get this-”</p><p>“Felix,” Sylvain pleads, “you <em> promised</em>.” </p><p>His imploring eyes stare Felix down and freeze him in place, fueling a gripping vice closing around his heart. They both flinch as another piece of stonework shatters close to them, and Felix can see one of the timbers blocking the doorways crack. In the distance, bold flashes of yellow light flare up against the smoky sky, and a massive, winged silhouette of <em> something </em> appears with its mouth open in an unholy screech. It reverberates throughout the monastery stone in a nearly-visible wave of sound. </p><p>He gives the dorms one last, fleeting look before tearing himself away, and reaching for Sylvain’s proffered hand. He tugs him up onto the horse, a tight fit with his armor, but Felix is able to fold himself and his swords and pack against his back. He wraps his arms around Sylvain’s waist before he can even process much else, clinging tight as Sylvain kicks his horse into a solid gallop, speeding their way away from whatever creatures and armies continue to rage and fight outside the monastery, back to their remaining retreating battalions. </p><p>Felix keeps holding on for the hours it takes for the walls of the monastery, now draped red with Imperial flags and eerily silent, to disappear behind them. He keeps holding on until they finally stop to breathe that night. </p><p>No one objects to him taking first watch. Both battalions are too tired to do anything but collapse into sleep or finally tend to their wounds, so he settles in on a tree stump for his shift, and stares out into the woods to the south. The cathedral fire must have spread to the other monastery buildings by now, he assumes; Edelgard has probably leveled the place. </p><p>In his mind’s eye he pictures a pile of teal wool turning to ash alongside his leftover uniforms, pictures the needles melting and warping into the wood. </p><p>It’s fitting, he thinks, bitterly, that the curse finally decided rear its head to destroy the sweater while it was in a closet. </p><p>—</p><p>Over the first three years, only small bands of Imperial troops begin to poke at the northern ranges of Faerghus. It’s a blessing and a curse, as Fraldarius and Gautier territories are able to clear farms of their crops and amass decent amounts of troops, but both remain constantly on edge, a twisting paranoia and fear hanging like fog over the land. The latest news regarding the boar...well, it doesn’t help. </p><p>Honestly, Felix knew that Fhirdiad was doomed, had known since Imperial soldiers first set foot in the Kingdom. It was only a matter of time. It’s only his father’s stubborn sense of “responsibility to Fraldarius lands” that keeps the old man from riding nonstop to the city with his troops. For once, Felix is somewhat grateful for his father’s dogged ideals of leadership. Otherwise, nothing would stop him from gallivanting in to get his head chopped off alongside...alongside Dimitri. </p><p>He supposes that he’s also grateful in a twisted way when Imperial soldiers start to invade in earnest. It gives him an excuse to avoid the gloomy walls of the Fraldarius manor, and provides endless opportunities to throw himself into a fight. Sylvain is also relegated towards commanding his territory’s soldiers on the front lines while his father holes up in their fort of an estate by the border. Felix works with him and Gautier troops often as they kick back wave after wave of invaders, sometimes joined by Ashe or Mercedes as they move between helping them and assisting Ingrid and her tentative position within Galatea lands. </p><p>There’s a rare break in battles one night, so Felix and his troops make camp with Gautier forces on the outskirts of the Itha Plains. Despite the extra downtime, he can’t bring himself to rest. Instead, he sits by a campfire outside the tent he and Sylvain always share when fighting together and tends to his rapier, working out the blunting and nicks that it had taken after downing three armored mounted units in a row. The night is quiet for once, save for the crackle of the fire, distant laughter from a few soldiers several tents away, and the familiar, almost meditative metallic noise of sharpening steel. </p><p>Sylvain sits next to him, as he often does on nights like this, somehow managing to recline and stretch out even on a camp stool. He is twisting pieces of leather around each other in a complicated braid, the ends of it held taut between his knees. </p><p>Felix looks over at him questioningly as his own hands continue to move. The whetstone slides over his blade in practiced, smooth motions, used to his obsessive care over the blade. The rapier had been a gift from the Professor, just a month before Edelgard’s invasion. It was all he had left of her influence, and he’d be damned if he let it break now. </p><p>“Where’d you learn to braid like that?” </p><p>“What, this? One of the girls in the stables back home taught me. That being said, we didn’t get very far in the lesson before we found...other uses for our hands.”</p><p>Sylvain smirks as he makes a crude gesture with a free hand, making Felix groan out loud. </p><p>“You’re absolutely insufferable. I don’t know why I put up with you.”</p><p>“Aw come on, you know you love me, Fe.”</p><p>Felix gives his sword a particularly hard scrape at that. Choking down his body’s response at the casual affection Sylvain exudes is second nature at this point, so that’s exactly what he does. </p><p>“What I’d <em> love </em> is for you to stop fucking whoever gives you the time of day before you go and get someone knocked up.”</p><p>“Bet my old man would love that, now wouldn’t he?” Sylvain’s tone takes on the usual bitterness that it usually does on any subject involving his father. </p><p>“Don’t you worry about any little Gautiers running around any time soon. I’d never give the bastard the satisfaction. You know he actually propositioned <em> Mercedes </em>to marry me last time she was there? Mercedes ‘the only woman I love more than Annette is the Goddess’ von Martritz?”</p><p>The corners of Felix’s mouth twitch in amusement as he tests the edge of his blade with a thumb. “What did she say to him?”</p><p>“Oh you know her, she was so polite in declining him that he actually ended up thanking her for it. She's too powerful for our mortal minds to handle, really.” </p><p>“Keep him away from Annie, then, she’ll probably have a much different reaction.”</p><p>Sylvain barks out a laugh. “Ha! That might actually be worth seeing, maybe she’d have the gall to do what I’ve wanted to do for years and hex him into the ground.”</p><p>“Here lies Margrave Gautier, hexed to death by vindictive lesbian,” Felix drawls. </p><p>“One can only dream.” </p><p>Sylvain ties the cord off in a small knot and dangles it in the air, examining it. Even while he’d seemingly been paying only a small fraction of attention to it, the braid looks perfect. He appears to approve of it with a nod, then moves his extended arm in Felix’s direction, holding it out. </p><p>“For you,” he says with a grin.</p><p>Felix accepts the cord warily from between Sylvain’s fingers. The object, small as it is, weighs in his palm as heavy as an anchor waiting to drag him to the bottom of an ocean. </p><p>“Why?” </p><p>Sylvain shrugs. “Why not?” </p><p>He pulls out several more pieces of leather, props them between his knees again, and begins to twist them together, looking pleased. “It’s kind of fun to make something tangible. Plus, chicks dig handmade presents. Makes ‘em all gooey and weak in the knees.” </p><p>“Gross,” Felix grunts, but his heart isn’t in it. He wants to throw the cord into the fire, to grind it into the dirt with a boot, to feed it to one of the horses. The dumb little piece of leather feels like the wick to a pile of explosives, its threatening, patient aura radiating throughout his hand. </p><p>He chooses to sheath his sword instead, shoves the cord in his pocket, and stands up to stalk back to their tent. </p><p>But, as he undresses and takes off his sword belts for the night, he can’t help but pause. He reaches back into his coat pocket to pull out the braided cord, and clumsily ties it onto one of his belts in a simple knot. </p><p>It means nothing, he tells himself; it could come in handy to tie something off. That’s all. </p><p>He tries his hardest to ignore the dull warmth of satisfaction in his gut when Sylvain notices the braid at his waist the next day at breakfast and beams like the fucking sun itself. </p><p>—</p><p>One evening, a year later in a tavern closer to the border, a knight with close-cropped dark hair and warm olive skin approaches Felix as he leans against the bar near Sylvain, who was currently working hard to charm the bartender into handing over a full bottle of whiskey.</p><p>The knight offers to buy Felix a drink, leans in just a little too close, starting a light, casual conversation that Felix warily allows. He stiffly responds to the knight’s gentle words; tolerates the suggestive flirtations presented in front of him like a serving platter. Yeah, the knight is attractive, he supposes, in a way, with a slightly curved nose and dimples that remind him of Claude von Riegan’s easy grins from the Academy. (That alone is enough to set his teeth on edge, really.) It’s getting tougher and tougher for him to figure out how to properly respond the longer that the man continues to linger. </p><p>He realizes a little too late that he’d stopped responding to the man’s questions, and suddenly the knight’s hand that had been creeping up to rest on Felix’s arm feels invasive and very wrong, almost like a crawling bug. He twitches away from it reflexively, and attempts to wrench his face into anything but the grimace he feels coming on. </p><p>The knight seems to get the hint, and tucks his hand back into his coat pocket with a nod, before taking his leave to slip back into the crowd of soldiers. He tells Felix before he goes that he enjoyed his company, and that they should talk again. </p><p>It takes the majority of Felix’s energy to give him a quick, jerky nod back. He doesn’t remember the man’s name. He doesn’t know if he should feel bad about that, or not. </p><p>He decides that his mug of ale will suddenly become the most interesting object in the room, and he downs half of it in one go as he turns back around to catch Sylvain watching him. His friend is leaning back on his elbows on the bar, loosely holding with one hand the bottle of liquor that he had apparently succeeded in procuring from the bartender.</p><p>“That knight was pretty hot,” Sylvain says nonchalantly, taking a pull from the bottle. Felix can’t help but follow with his eyes the position of  Sylvain’s long fingers wrapped around its glass neck as he does. “If you’re not going to hit that, let me know, because I just might.”</p><p>Felix feels his heart stop, like a Thoron bolt hitting him square in the chest. The ale that he’s been chugging sprays back up in his throat, hoppy liquid foaming out his mouth and burning his nose as he just manages to catch it in his cup. He splutters it out for a second, wincing at the feeling. </p><p>“Since when are you into <em> men</em>?” </p><p>Sylvain makes a noncommittal, amused noise, making no effort to help Felix recover from spewing half his beer back up, acting almost absurdly casual about the whole scenario, as if he hadn’t just admitted that there was a whole section of the population- <em> Felix’s </em>section of the population, Goddess above- that he was interested in. </p><p>“I don’t know, since a while, I guess.” </p><p>Sylvain shrugs with a lopsided grin. He bumps his shoulder sideways into Felix’s. “What can I say? If they’re good-looking, I’m into it, doesn’t matter what they are. More of me to go around, you know?”</p><p>He raises an eyebrow at Felix’s still-stunned expression. “What, you’re not excited for me? Now we can totally wingman for each other!”</p><p>Felix’s stomach clenches around the remaining alcohol and little amount of food in his system. His voice comes out in a strained, gruff exhale. “What, do you want a fucking medal or something? Sure, whatever, great job.”</p><p>He downs the remainder of his pint glass, backwash and all, before shoving it roughly across the bar. “All I’m hearing is that you’re going to be double the amount of annoying now.”</p><p>“Feeeelix, come on, we’ve like, got the same objectives now!” </p><p>Sylvain has the ruddy flush he often gets around his neck and ears once he’s a few drinks in. Felix wonders what it would feel like to press a cool hand to the reddened, heated skin, and what reaction his friend would have, if he would shudder and groan, if he would lean into the touch, if…</p><p>The chorus of “ifs” ping around the inside of his skull as he scowls, annoyed both with Sylvain and with his traitorous imagination. </p><p>“I don’t want any part in this, Sylvain. Congrats on your sudden personal journey. I’m sure you’re ecstatic at a whole new segment of the world to screw over.” </p><p>“Screw over, around, upside-down, anywhere,” Sylvain merrily responds, tilting the last of the liquor into his mouth. His lips pull off of the bottle’s mouth with a sinful, incredibly deliberate pop. “Might as well have some fun, right? You could get in on it too if you tried, that knight really does have a great-”</p><p>“Leave me out of this,” Felix snaps. His swords clank a bit against his side as he pushes a little too forcefully away from the bar. “I don’t give a damn about whose genitals you want to run from your problems into. Just keep that shit away from me.” </p><p>Sylvain’s eyes are somewhere just past half-lidded, peering out at him under long eyelashes and an unreadable (possibly smug?) expression that’s clouded from the haze of whiskey. “Suit yourself,” he finally replies, after a long moment. </p><p>He pushes away from the bar himself in a surprisingly steady motion for the amount of alcohol in his system. </p><p>“If I find one of them whose dick’s been replaced with a sword I’ll be sure to send him your way, since that’s apparently your biggest interest.” </p><p>“Tch. Maybe he’ll do all of Fódlan a favor and chop yours off instead.” </p><p>“Hey, that’s not all I need to be successful, Fe.” Sylvain spreads two fingers in a V on either side of his tongue, and wiggles it at him. He lets out a sharp laugh at Felix’s expression, which feels like a mixture of extremely pissed with an unfortunate addition of embarrassment that he wishes he was better at hiding. Sylvain shoots him a two-fingered salute before sauntering over to a table with several Dagdan mercenaries, instantly pressing himself into both their conversation and one mercenary’s personal space. </p><p>Felix is twenty-three years old. Felix has killed over a hundred people (a low estimate, really) in battle at this point. Felix hasn’t let a single tear or tantrum escape his body since the day they buried his brother’s empty coffin. </p><p>So, while an inner part of him wants to stomp his foot and rage with hot tears boiling to the point of steam inside his head, he shakes it off. This only confirmed what he had been telling himself since he saw Sylvain in his stupid Academy uniform greeting him with a gleaming smile and open arms...and then directly propositioning the brand-new Professor with an arm still around Felix’s shoulders. It had been the unfortunate recurring thought that he was only able to truly ignore through the motion of knitting needles in his hands. </p><p>(It didn’t matter who Sylvain liked, or loved, or fucked. In the end, down the passage of time that seemed to speed up and halt as erratically as it pleased, it would never be Felix who would see him at the end. Who he would stay for.)</p><p>Sylvain returns to their tent just before the first light of dawn peeks in through the cracks in the canvas, shirt untucked, hair ruffled, and stinking of whiskey, pungent Dagdan tobacco, and sex. </p><p>Felix holds himself very still against his bedroll, curled away from the front of the tent, and keeps his eyes shut tight. This wasn’t the first time Sylvain had returned around the crack of dawn, and it wasn’t the first time in a long shot that Felix was awake to witness it and pretend to sleep through. </p><p>This time, though, he feels his teeth grind together despite his best efforts. He curls in on the weight in his stomach, almost into a ball, and screws his eyes closed to the point where bright colors pop under his eyelids. </p><p>He forces himself back to sleep. He intentionally does not allow himself to dream. </p><p>—</p><p>Not that long after, just a little further south, Felix makes his way to their (in his opinion, half-baked) attempt at a reunion at Garreg Mach with Ingrid and Sylvain. They join up with her battalion of slightly battered pegasus riders, their armor and equipment showing telltale signs of wear and tear from constant battle without the funds or means to mend them. The soldiers follow Ingrid anyway, because the Galatea people are, as always, stubborn to their core as the unyielding soil of their fields. </p><p>The three of them watch as the last of the knights settle into formation, their families and squires sending along their final well-wishes. A woman with dirty blonde hair flings her arms around a nearby knight’s shoulders in a final embrace, then tucks a dark red knitted scarf around them as a replacement for her touch. Felix, expecting the familiar wringing of his stomach at the sight, is surprised when no such pain occurs. He just feels...empty. Tired. Scooped out and hollowed, like the bottom of an empty cask of Galatea wine. </p><p>“Hey, Felix,” Ingrid says, and he sees her and Sylvain watching the woman as well. “Remember when you used to knit all the time? I still have that scarf.” </p><p>Sylvain makes a noise of surprise and realization. “Hey, yeah, Fe, I remember that too! You were such a little craftsman, it was adorable! Whatever happened to that?”</p><p>Felix doesn’t look at Sylvain’s cheerful, open expression, or at the veiled, knowing pity he assumes Ingrid is probably displaying. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road in front of them, on his horse’s hooves pushing them all forward towards the monastery. </p><p>“Nothing happened,” he says. “I grew out of it.” </p><p>—</p><p>“Holy shit,” Ingrid says as they approach the monastery to find the forms of Dimitri and Byleth fighting side by side, dirty, battered, and very much alive. “I can’t believe they both made it.”</p><p>Honestly? Felix can. The boar’s too stubborn to die, and the Professor...well, he’s seen her rip her way out of a magic dimension, so it’s not surprising to learn that she somehow survived her unexpected cliff dive. He gave up questioning her magic shit a long time ago. She still has her Relic, he can see, and he’s actually surprised to see it still in perfect working condition. </p><p>Dimitri has his Relic too. Great. He can feel Aegis pulse at his back as if generations of stupidly loyal Fraldarius blood are acknowledging the Blaiddyd spear’s nearby presence. (He wonders if it’s possible to hush a shield.)</p><p>He barely spares the two of them a glance, though, in favor of scanning the walls of the monastery. </p><p>“The buildings are still intact,” he breathes. “I wonder- do you think everything’s still inside?”</p><p>“We can go see if the stash of dirty books I swiped are still under my bed after we win, okay?” Sylvain winks at him and Ingrid. “Right now, let’s go help Dima and the Professor!”</p><p>Felix feels himself cutting down the (laughably underpowered) bandits in a daze, then feels himself greeting the Professor and his classmates with the briefest amount of words possible. He doesn’t spare any for the boar. Dimitri looks positively feral, even more unhinged if possible, and he certainly doesn’t want any part of <em> that</em>. So, while the Blue Lions are reuniting, he slips away from them with the grace learned from his Assassin training, and makes a beeline towards the dormitories. </p><p>His room is...still there. All of them are. One door seems to have been knocked off of its hinges down the hallway and there’s a thick layer of gravel and dust coating everything, but it’s all still, unbelievably, there. His bedroom is similarly dusty and cobwebbed but otherwise intact, and he barely manages to take it all in as he drifts to his wardrobe in an almost supernatural pull. </p><p>The closet doors stick as they open in a rusted squeal of hinges, and a puff of dust is the first thing that appears after he finally forces them open. He fans it away from his face, coughing a bit, before sight of the object sitting on the bottom of the wardrobe stops the movement of his lungs in a choke. </p><p>He doesn’t know whether to sink to the floor in relief, to swear at the Goddess for fucking with him for five years, or to just bemoan his life’s incredibly twisted sense of luck. With one pale, shaky hand, he touches the undisturbed bag of knitting as if it could disappear at any moment. </p><p>It’s solid, soft and <em>real </em> under his fingertips and he feels like his heart is cracking in two and being patched back together at the exact same time.</p><p>Two sharp raps sound at his door, breaking through five years’ worth of time in an instant. </p><p>“Felix!” Sylvain’s voice shouts from the other side of the door. “They opened up the dining hall cellars again and you’ll never guess how much dried meat they ended up finding! Lucky for us, huh? Get out here, let’s go get the good stuff before Ingrid eats it all!” </p><p>Felix stands, making his decision. When he opens the door to head out, he clutches his pack over his shoulder to take with him. Inside, shoved deep within the canvas, the shape of his needles press themselves into his back. </p><p>“Yeah,” he says to Sylvain, feeling a ghost of a smile begin to appear on his face. “Lucky for us.” </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry this is later than I initially planned! My motivation was really flagging on connecting a couple scenes together, and it took me a while to come up with something that I deemed acceptable. </p><p>I’m also sorry for the angst this chapter!! I promise there’s a very good and happy ending coming eventually (because I am literally incapable of writing sad endings). I really didn’t mean to get this angsty when I first started this fic, but then the spirit of Felix Fraldarius possessed me, my body became 99% salt, and this came out. I hope it was still enjoyable!</p><p>Next chapter should hopefully be up early next week as I try to get back on a regular schedule.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next few moons change the tide for the Blue Lions, bolstered by the sudden appearance of allies and the Professor’s immediate focus on battle management. They start actively pushing back. They start planning long-term strategies. And, surprisingly or unsurprisingly depending on who you ask, they start <em> winning</em>. </p><p>(And if the boar continues to be absolutely stark raving mad with no sign of stopping? Well. Felix had never liked looking too far into the future anyway.) </p><p>He’s leaving the planning tent after a final meeting the night before they head to the Great Bridge of Myrddin when he sees Sylvain hang back, moving over to talk to the Professor. Felix finds himself stalling outside the tent, ears perking up to listen. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d get to hear the Professor reprimand Sylvain for distractedly staring off into space for the last half of the meeting.</p><p>“Professor,” Sylvain starts, “can I talk to you about something?”</p><p>There’s a rustling of paper as Byleth folds up the remaining maps. “Why didn’t you say anything in the meeting, Sylvain?” </p><p>“It’s...about Felix.”</p><p>Felix freezes. He flattens himself against the side of the tent, crouched partly behind a barrel, hating himself for wanting to stay and eavesdrop the whole time. He stays put, though.</p><p>“What about him?” Byleth asks.</p><p>“You don’t have us stationed next to each other,” Sylvain says. “You <em> always </em> put us next to each other, that’s how we work.” </p><p>“Felix and Yuri are the two fastest units we’ve got.” The Professor’s voice takes on the same flat, succinct tone that she used to adopt in all of her lectures. “The quicker we take out General Ladislava the better, and they’re our best bet to get to her. I already went over this.”</p><p>“But, you’re sending them both out without battalions! Without backup!” </p><p>“They’re both trained assassins, and they work well together,” Byleth replies. “Stealth is in their favor. Besides, I need you on Ferdinand, with Dorothea. I think we can sway him to our side.”</p><p>“But-”</p><p>“That’s final, Sylvain. The plans are set.” </p><p>“But I-” Sylvain starts, then cuts himself off, and Felix hears him give a resigned sigh. “Okay, fine. I’m just worried. It’s not something I’m used to.”</p><p>“If you two can’t fight without each other nearby, then I did a shit job as a teacher,” Byleth drawls. </p><p>“No! You didn’t! I can!”</p><p><em> “I can, but I don’t want to,” </em> Felix feels himself think. </p><p>“You know he’ll be safe,” the Professor says, a little more gently. “I trust Yuri.” </p><p>A hushed voice appears out of nowhere in Felix’s left ear. “Huh. Don’t hear that often.” </p><p>It says a lot about Felix that he doesn’t immediately stab the purple shadow that materializes next to him, leaning against a barrel with a cocked eyebrow. He waves at him with a whispered greeting. “Eavesdropping, Felix? Really?” </p><p>Felix flips him off, and Yuri smirks, miming locking his lips and throwing away the key. The inside of the tent is silent, but neither person inside appears to have noticed the two of them outside it. </p><p>“It’s not him I’m worried about, Professor,” Sylvain finally blurts out. “It’s me. I’m too reckless without him to watch my back. He keeps me sane. He keeps me...safe. I need him there.”</p><p>There’s a pause where the only sound is a chorus of crickets from the nearby fields and Felix’s pounding heartbeat. Sylvain <em> needs </em> him, he just said it, he doesn’t want to leave him behind. </p><p>He deliberately does not look up at Yuri to see whatever face he might be making.</p><p>“You know,” Sylvain says quietly to Byleth, after a bit of silence, enough that Felix has to strain his ears. “We made a promise that we would die together. A long time ago.”</p><p>“Well, there you go,” the Professor says. “If you’re not next to each other, you can’t die, or you’d break the promise. Job done, problem solved.” </p><p>“I’ve broken promises to him before.” </p><p>Sylvain’s voice is still quiet, but rings heavy through Felix’s ears like the mournful clanging of the cathedral’s remaining bells. It echoes through his head and the tent until Byleth responds. </p><p>“Have you broken the promises that are important?” </p><p>“...No. No, I haven’t.” </p><p>Felix’s knee gives out a bit, having held his crouched position for so long. It skids in the dirt as he scrambles to keep himself from making any noise. Yuri thrusts a hand out towards him, helping him up and cocks his head to motion them away from the tent. Felix follows him on silent, shaky legs to sit next to the man at a campfire an appropriate distance away from the strategy tent and closer to the sleeping areas. </p><p>Yuri finally speaks up at a more normal volume and nudges Felix’s side. “Still holding a torch for your sweater boy, huh?” </p><p>Felix scowls into the flames, but doesn’t deny it. It would be a useless endeavor- Yuri made it his business to know intimate details about people, and Felix was no exception. He really doesn't mind, honestly. There was no one better at keeping secrets than the Mockingbird, after all. Byleth wasn’t wrong, he actually did tolerate Yuri, even as annoyingly cryptic as he was. It helped that Felix possessed similar information about him, after the two of them had fallen into bed together several times over the past few years to drown out their desires for two certain other people. </p><p>“Still pining after the Professor, Yuri?” </p><p>He props his chin up with a hand, resting his elbow on his leg. Yuri simply chuckles, not denying anything either. “You ready for tomorrow?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Felix says. </p><p>Yuri stretches out like a cat next to him, all lean lines and sharp angles. It’s vaguely suggestive, like everything he does, always with a slight ambiguity around whether he’s intentionally presenting himself in a certain way or not. Felix doesn’t feel like delving too deep into that right now, though. His thoughts are too full of Sylvain’s voice repeating over and over again, <em>"</em><em>he keeps me sane, he keeps me safe, I need him; he keeps me sane, he keeps me safe, I need him.” </em></p><p>“Wanna make a bet?” Yuri asks. “Whoever takes Ladislava down gets the Wo Dao I dug up in my last shipment.” </p><p>“Where the <em> fuck </em> did you find a Wo Dao five years into a war- you know what? I don’t want to know.”</p><p>“Smart answer,” Yuri says, flashing his teeth in a pointed grin. “You on?” </p><p>“Fucking duh,” Felix says. </p><p>Yuri pokes at his sword belt. “You got room there for a third sword?”</p><p>“If that’s a euphemism, then no.”</p><p>He puts the back of his hand to his forehead in a dramatic lean backwards. “Why Felix, you’re so cruel to me! You’re lucky I’m into that.”</p><p>Felix can’t help but laugh at that, and Yuri joins him, but they cut themselves off when an armored figure steps out of the planning tent, making his way closer to them and the rest of camp. Sylvain stops at the sight of them sitting next to each other, about twenty emotions seeming to flicker across his face at once. </p><p>“Oh- uh, hey, Fe. Hey, Yuri.” </p><p>Yuri nods his head back at him cordially. “Sylvain.” </p><p>Felix keeps himself very still, continuing to rest his chin in his hand, leaning forward to watch the shifting shadows thrown by the fire dance their way across Sylvain’s face. He doesn’t say anything, just watches with a bizarre sense of calm. Sylvain’s eyes dart between him and Yuri, seemingly calculating the small amount of space between them. A tiny line appears between his eyebrows. “What are you guys talking about?”</p><p>“Oh, not much,” Yuri replies, almost sing-song in his casual tone. “We were just going over our moves for tomorrow, that’s all. I’m pretty familiar with Felix’s many forms, but I just wanted to touch on some things.”</p><p>Felix resists the urge to stomp on the man’s foot. He settles for rolling his eyes instead at the innuendo. </p><p>(He refuses to consider that he possibly might have a type.) </p><p>“Oh,” Sylvain says again. Felix can see his shoulders hunch in a bit, even under the plate of his armor. “Well, uh, I’m going to bed. You guys should, um, get some rest too?”</p><p>“Sir, yes sir,” Yuri says cheerily. “I’ll see <em> you </em> bright and early, Fraldarius.” He gives Felix’s thigh a squeeze, making an amused noise at his resulting expression, then melts with practiced ease back into the night. The flap of the planning tent opens and shuts silently as the outline of his slim figure slips inside. </p><p>“Okay, wow,” Sylvain says. He still looks a little stunned as Felix rises to go back to their tent. “I didn’t know you two were…”</p><p>“We aren’t,” Felix instantly shoots back. (He decides not to mention when that statement would have been true, in the past). “He’s just a dick.” </p><p>“A bit of a flirt, though, huh?” Sylvain says as he falls into step next to him. He holds open the tent flap for Felix to duck under his arm and head inside. </p><p>He snorts at that while turning away to take off his gear. “You’re one to talk, Gautier.” </p><p>“Ha, well...yeah. I guess I am.” Sylvain’s tone is odd, wavering a little, and Felix actually pauses in the middle of undressing for the night to look over at him. </p><p>Sylvain’s eyes are focused forward on Felix and his unbuttoned coat that he had shrugged halfway off. They linger on his torso and exposed arms and Felix becomes acutely aware of the scars tracing across his forearms and shoulders. It feels like they force themselves out more onto his skin from the feel of Sylvain’s gaze, and he rubs at one of the newer ones reflexively. He can’t even remember where he got this one. That’s becoming more and more common as the years go by; the scars stop having stories associated with them and turn into nothing but physical tally marks of near-death.</p><p>The movement breaks Sylvain’s focus. He replaces the strange contemplative expression with his normal grin, and leans down to dig through his pack. Felix ignores the goosebumps on his exposed arms to turn back to his bag too, but stops when several bottles thump onto his bedroll next to him just seconds later. </p><p>He lifts up one of the bottles Sylvain had tossed in his direction. “Three elixirs? How long have you had these?” </p><p>“Picked them up here and there,” Sylvain says. He rubs a hand on the back of his head. “Just take them with you tomorrow, okay? I know that Yuri’s got some healing, but I’d feel better knowing you’ve got these with you.”</p><p>“You should really keep these, Sylvain,” Felix says, frowning. “You’re the one who keeps jumping in front of soldiers and getting hit.” </p><p>Sylvain gives him a crooked grin. “Nah, that’s what armor’s for, right? Don’t worry about little old me, I’ll be peachy.” </p><p>Felix shakes his head frustratedly at him. “Think about your own well-being too, you dunderhead.” </p><p>“What if part of my well-being is knowing you’re safe when I can’t see you?" </p><p>Felix opens his mouth, then shuts it again. He opens it again, but no response comes out. All biting retorts die on his tongue at Sylvain’s sincerity, disintegrating under the gentle earnestness. He finally gives a stilted nod, and dissolves even further internally from the open relief on Sylvain’s face. The elixirs are placed into his belt pouches and set to the side. </p><p>“You’ve got more, right? For you?”</p><p>“Eh, I’ve got a couple. Smaller ones, but I can handle it.”</p><p>“Don’t hesitate to use them, then.” Felix shakes a pebble out of his boot and chucks it at his friend as he tries to brush the topic off. “Really. I...I need to know you’re safe too. Don’t do anything stupid.”</p><p>Sylvain’s smile is wide, with only a small pained undercurrent. “Come on, have you <em> met </em> me?”</p><p>“Unfortunately,” Felix mutters. He rolls over on his bedroll, pulling it up past his chin. “We’ll both be fine. Go to bed, Syl.” </p><p>He hears a muffled laugh behind him as Sylvain climbs into his own bedroll. </p><p>“Anything for you, Fe.”</p><p>—</p><p>Sylvain manages to hold off from being a self-sacrificing idiot at Myrddin, but takes a nasty hit from a Devil Axe a moon later at Gronder and lies feverish and unconscious in a medical tent for three days. Felix barely leaves his side, partly out of worry and partly because he wants to avoid the boar’s clumsy attempts at condolences for the hit his old man took on his behalf. No one gives Felix any condolences in the medical tent, not even a sideways glance of pity. They’re all too busy doing their <em> jobs</em>, like the boar...fuck, <em> Dimitri </em>...should be doing. </p><p>He likes it better that way. </p><p>He fidgets so much at Sylvain’s bedside the first day that by the second, Mercedes shoves his bag of knitting in his hand to fend off his clumsy attempts to help. (He’s so distracted that he doesn’t even protest to her having gone through his things in such a blatant manner.) Instead, he reluctantly begins the lower rows of the sweater, only raising his head up from his work whenever Sylvain twitches in his sleep, replacing the cooling cloths on his head and keeping the sickly purple wound across his leg clean and elevated. </p><p>On the third day, Claude von Riegan appears in the tent with a stoppered bottle containing (what he claims is) an antidote in one hand and a fresh bowl of stew in the other. Felix blocks his access to Sylvain’s bed. </p><p>He still doesn’t trust the man, even after he’d appeared out of thin air at the previous battle, supposedly “helping” to reverse the Empire’s advances. He couldn’t be sure that Claude didn’t have some sort of ulterior motive for weaseling his way into their camp, their war meetings, and even into the boar’s fucking tent at night. He couldn’t be sure that the so-called Duke’s so-called antidote wasn’t just a clever ruse to finish Sylvain off for good. </p><p>“Chill, Fraldarius, it’s a real antidote, I promise,” Claude says before Felix can get a word in edgewise. “Here, I’ll prove it.” </p><p>He uncorks the bottle, taking a small sip of the liquid, swallows, and closes it again with a flourish. “See? Completely harmless.” </p><p>Felix narrows his eyes at him, waiting with folded arms, unmoving. After a full minute, when the man shows no signs of dropping dead, he relents, shifting aside to allow Claude to tip the remaining tincture down Sylvain’s throat. </p><p>“You better not be lying about this, von Riegan,” he warns. “If something goes wrong, the Alliance will have to find a new leader, because you’ll be dead on my sword.” </p><p>He sinks back into his chair to continue his vigil, picking his needles back up. </p><p>“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Claude says breezily. He seems utterly unbothered by Felix’s harsh tone. “We’re on the same side, now remember? It would be a really dumb move to get rid of one of our best generals.” </p><p>“He’s not <em> your </em> general,” Felix mutters, but Claude ignores him. </p><p>“Also,” Claude adds, stowing the empty bottle somewhere back inside his stupid fancy coat, “I’d never do that to Dimitri. Teach is already barely handling him dealing with one death; she couldn’t handle him grieving both Gautier <em> and- </em>”</p><p>Claude abruptly stops speaking at the sight of Felix’s murderous expression. “...yikes, sorry. Still not talking about that, huh?” </p><p>He looks down at the pile of knitting in Felix’s lap, at his hand clutching a needle so tightly that his knuckles start to whighten. </p><p>“So...a sweater, right? I’m guessing it’s for tall, red, and handsome here? Hey, good on you for getting past that whole curse thing, Marianne still refuses to make one for Hilda because of it, but to be fair, she’s not had the best history with curses-”</p><p>The Fraldarius Crest fills the corner of the dim tent with light as Felix clenches his fist so tightly that he <em> snaps </em> the needle in half. He stares down in horror at his hands, at the broken pieces of his only set of needles. </p><p>A sick pit begins to form in his stomach, as if he were the one poisoned instead. </p><p>Claude whistles. “Dang. You’ve got quite a grip there, Fraldarius.” </p><p>“Claude,” Felix says, low and dangerous. He barely recognizes his own voice at this point. “Get the fuck out.” </p><p>For probably once in his damned life, Claude does not attempt to have the last word. Instead, he simply gives Felix a small, somber nod, and slips out of the tent without making a sound. </p><p>—</p><p>Felix doesn’t end up having to kill Claude after all. True to the Duke’s word, Sylvain returns to consciousness and zips through the remaining recovery period with seemingly little effort. He’s back on his feet before the end of the week. </p><p>Felix doesn’t thank Claude. To the man’s credit, he never demands any thanks, either. Felix does stop scoffing at his contributions in every single war council, though. </p><p>(He generously scales it back to an insult every <em>other</em> meeting.)</p><p>Thankfully, between the other generals’ efforts to catch Sylvain up to speed and their newly revamped campaign to take back Fhirdiad, Felix is able to deftly slip away from most of the leftover attempts at condolences that anyone comes to offer him. Instead, he trains at a furious pace with Leonie and Caspar, who had recently arrived with Lindhardt after managing to skirt Empire borders. He also throws himself into drilling his new battalion of Fraldarius soldiers, and helps with any physical task around camp that keeps his hands busy. </p><p>Every now and then, the bag of blue wool peeks out from the bottom of his pack. He keeps the needles, even useless as they are, but has so far not found anywhere to mend them, or even to buy replacements. The towns they pass through to reach the Capitol are barely clinging onto life, and stores of trivial things like knitting needles disappeared long ago in favor of the much more urgent food and medical supplies able to trickle into the area. So, each time the bag makes an appearance, he pulls the strings tighter, shoves it down even further, and walks away from his pack to find something to do. </p><p>They make camp outside of a small collection of farms and homes just a day’s ride away from Fhirdiad. He spends that day avoiding the more pressing generals (and the boar, by extension) by carrying firewood with one of the women from the town, a short, sturdy farmer with curly brown hair and the type of cheerful demeanor only existing in those who have experienced extreme hardship, looked it directly in the face, and chosen to stare it down into submission each and every day. Sylvain, likely avoiding the stressful bouts of planning as well, joins him halfway through his first trip, guiding several cavalry horses back and forth to the nearby creek for water. </p><p>Felix and the woman, who introduces herself as Nicola, pause at her farm after the third trip of the day, splitting half a small loaf of dark rye bread that she insists on offering him. Across the small field in front of the house, her three children are sprinting back and forth along the creek’s banks, followed by several other town children who alternate between asking to pet Sylvain’s horses and asking for rides on his shoulders. </p><p>Nicola is methodically removing several pieces of laundry that have finished drying on a line and folding them into a basket to take inside when Felix catches a glimpse of several small balls of homespun yarn, an old pair of scissors, and a set of knitting needles resting underneath the clothing. She notices him looking at them, and sets the basket down at her side. </p><p>“Do you knit?”</p><p>Felix nods. From a distance, he watches Sylvain showing Nicola’s daughter how to hold out her hand flat to offer a dried apple to his horse. </p><p>Nicola gives him a bright smile. “How wonderful! Are you working on anything right now?” </p><p>He struggles to come up with exactly what to say or how to explain things for a second, but his mouth moves faster than his brain. “A sweater,” he says. </p><p>Across the field, Sylvain is now juggling three apples for a cheering audience of children, tossing one up to catch behind his back and utterly failing to. The kids erupt in delighted laughter as he reacts in exaggerated distress.</p><p>She follows his gaze. Her curious expression turns into a more understanding one. “Is it for him?” </p><p>Felix casts his eyes down to the ground immediately, but after a while, he gives up on the losing battle of obscuring anything. “It is.” </p><p>“I see. Is this your first one?”</p><p>He nods again, unable to say much else. </p><p>She looks at Sylvain’s tall form being mobbed by children, at the growing blush forming at the ridges of Felix’s cheekbones. Even on her windburnt, slightly lined face, she looks gentle. “You’re worried about the curse.” </p><p>She doesn’t phrase it as a question, just a statement of the truth. Felix keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. It’s easier than meeting what he can only assume is pity or something even sappier in her eyes. </p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters. “It got me already. My needle broke and I can’t get another one.” </p><p>Nicola doesn’t respond, just hums thoughtfully to herself as she folds the last piece of clothing into her basket before joining him to pick up another bundle of firewood. They begin to make the trek back to camp, crossing the field and beginning to wade across the shallow creek. </p><p>“Hey, Fe!” Sylvain calls from several yards away as they cross through the water. “There you are! Look, guys, that’s Felix Fraldarius, he’s the sharpest sword in all of Fódlan, he can move faster than the wind and can sneak up on anyone!” </p><p>“He doesn’t look that fast!” One of the smaller children pipes up. Felix stands ankle-deep in the creek, stopped by their collective attention. He looks at Sylvain a little helplessly, arms full of firewood and unable to do much. </p><p>“Oh, he’s the fastest!” </p><p>Sylvain spins the child around in a circle. “Look, he’s going to run here and all the way back, just now.”</p><p>A beat passes. Felix doesn’t move. </p><p>“There!” Sylvain cries. “Do you want to see him do it again?” </p><p>A layered chorus of disbelieving protests echo from behind Felix as he shakes his head, slogging out of the creek to catch up with an amused Nicola. Over his shoulder, Sylvain sends him a grin and a wink, and he can’t help the small smile that appears automatically on his face. They continue on their way to camp. </p><p>“Something I found out about the curse of the love sweater,” the woman says, unprompted and casually, “is that its worst effects happen to its strongest believers, regardless of whether they actually say they believe in it or not.” </p><p>Felix is silent for a moment. The only sounds are their feet across dry grass, the slight wet slap of his boots leaving a trail of mud behind him. </p><p>“So, it’s my own fault?” </p><p>“Not necessarily. Luck’s a strange force in this world. It’s both bigger and smaller than what people think it is.” </p><p>(<em>Luck</em>. Fucking hell, there are some days when he truly hates that word, hates that the name he chose has to connect to it. From the way he sees things, it feels like yet another curse looming over him sometimes.)</p><p>“That doesn’t make any sense.” </p><p>She shrugs, unconcerned. “It’s the emphasis you put on luck that matters. You know, it took me three years to finish my husband’s first sweater? Yeah, I kept ripping out the last few rows because I was so worried that he’d leave me once I gave it to him.”</p><p>Felix internally winces at his own timeline, but keeps his voice steady as he walks. “How did you end up finishing?” </p><p>“It’s pretty silly, actually. The winter was especially hard that year, and he needed warmer clothes to work outdoors. I realized that I had an almost-finished sweater for him just sitting there that he could be using, and I was the one keeping it from him to make me somehow feel ‘safer.’” </p><p>She laughs. “You know what really made me safe? Having a husband who could walk to the market to sell our goods without freezing to death!” </p><p>Felix wrinkles his nose. He’s getting a headache from the mental prodding. “I have my sword to keep me safe. That’s not why I can’t finish the sweater.” </p><p>“Is it?” </p><p>She gives him an inscrutable look. He squirms internally, feeling like a bug under glass. It’s not a feeling he enjoys. He tends to prefer picking other people apart, rather than having it turned in on himself. </p><p>They reach the camp, and he drops his pile unceremoniously on top of the rest, reaching up to wipe a bit of sawdust off of his face and straightening his spine. “I...I think that’s enough firewood. Thank you for your assistance, ma’am. If you visit our quartermaster she should provide you with payment for the day.” </p><p>Nicola raises an eyebrow at his sudden formality, but inclines her head at him. “Thank you, Your Grace. I do hope that you see this through to the end.” </p><p>He nods back, a little confused at her choice of words, but keeps his Duke mask firmly in place. “Once we retake Fhirdiad, Enbarr is all that remains between us and peace,” he says, a little stiffly, repeating the phrase he’s said to countless people by now. “It won’t be much longer now.” </p><p>She gives him yet another one of those odd looks, but curtsies to him, and departs back to her children and farm. </p><p>—</p><p>Felix is approached by their quartermaster later that evening as he’s on his way back to his and Sylvain’s tent. </p><p>“Your Grace,” she calls. It continues to feel absolutely bizarre for Felix to answer to that title. He can't tell if that will ever stop being the case. (He supposes that he could have asked his father if he'd thought of things like this. Too late, now.) “A woman left something for you in my care this afternoon.” </p><p>In the firelight, Sylvain’s silhouette jumps as a piece of armor he had been polishing clatters out of his hands. Felix turns to the quartermaster, confused. </p><p>“A woman?” </p><p>The quartermaster hands him a slender package, wrapped in freshly cleaned linen. “She asked that we deliver this to you, with her best wishes.” She bows slightly to him. “Have a pleasant evening, sir.” </p><p>Felix finds a flat rock to sit on away from the parts of the camp that remain awake, and unwraps the bundle. Two metal knitting needles fall into his hands, along with an attached note. He turns it around to read the short message carefully printed on it. </p><p>
  <em> “I wasn’t talking about the war.” </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I don't know what it is about writing interactions between Claude and Felix, but I just love doing them. It's a damn shame that Ingrid is the only one of the Faerghus Four to have any supports with him, truly. </p><p>Also, I'm currently romancing Yuri in Silver Snow right now and having an absolute ball, so we get some Yurileth in here for kicks!</p><p>See y'all next week hopefully for the conclusion. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey, hi, hello, and welcome to the final (and longest) chapter! Small content warning for a description of wounds and near-death experience around the final half of the chapter, and for the mention of a (trans male) pregnancy in the final two sections. If you don’t feel like reading those last two, you can stop before the paragraph that begins, “One night, Sylvain enters their bedroom,” and ending there should still work for the story.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for making it this far, and enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even with the new needles, Felix doesn’t get much time to work on the sweater for the next few moons. It turns out, waging a war while politically rebuilding Faerghus following Dimitri’s coronation takes up quite a bit of time. What a shock. </p>
<p>It’s a hard, merciless stretch of travel and battles: starting with helping Claude take back the Alliance capital, only for him to turn around, hand Failnaught to the Professor, kiss a shocked and blushing Dimitri full on the mouth, and fly off with the Almyran forces. (An insufferably dramatic dick, that man, through and through.)</p>
<p>They smash through Fort Merceus, where Felix breaks two bows, three fingers on his left hand, and his new Wo Dao. Yuri offers to find him someone to repair it, but Felix leaves the pieces sticking out of the Death Knight like needles in an oversized skein of yarn and refuses. Three days later, Yuri and Byleth both show up at the door of his room anyway, carrying a shining Sword of Zoltan between them. </p>
<p>Felix still doesn’t cry, but he <em> might </em> have teared up a bit at the gesture.</p>
<p>Sylvain seems to hang around him more and more as well. The man had always been the clingy type, pushing his way past Felix’s walls to chatter away at him, practice with him, eat with him, and more. He ramps this up to the maximum degree in the moon before Enbarr, though. Felix doesn’t even see him so much as look at a girl, much less flirt with one, and he can’t remember the last time that he’s seen Sylvain make his way to town to drink or find someone to sleep with. If it were anyone else, he would have stabbed them for their constant presence long ago. </p>
<p>To be fair, it was starting to get annoying, even with Sylvain. Their approach to the Imperial capital had begun in earnest, and between that and his friend’s ability to always magically appear by his side every free moment he managed to get, Felix doesn’t ever find the space to work on the last few rows of the sweater. It sits in his bag each night as he opens it on their trek to the south, but just as he reaches a hand out for it, Sylvain pulls him into conversation, showing up in their tent with gossip and stories picked up from around the camp. </p>
<p>Some nights, they stay awake talking so long that Felix falls asleep with his head on Sylvain’s shoulder. When he wakes, he finds the man passed out next to him, soft snores tickling his hair in a way that feels painfully domestic. </p>
<p>The sweater, however, remains unfinished.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>They are a day’s march away from Enbarr, and Felix can practically smell the smoke and steel of the upcoming battlegrounds hanging pungent in the air. He’s been through countless battles now, but from the way people are acting about this one, like it’s a final cliffhanger of one of Dorothea’s epics, well, it’s enough to make even him feel a little queasy. </p>
<p>Halfway through the afternoon, as Felix returns from one of the training bouts that Sylvain had started agreeing to more often (after his latest burst of work ethic following Felix chewing him out for being reckless for the millionth time), he sees Yuri and Byleth seated side-by-side in her tent, writing notes on a map of Enbarr spread out on a tiny camp table. Yuri rests an elbow on the map as he leans over to say something with his normal sly smile, which Byleth rolls her eyes at, and then...actually grins at him. With teeth.</p>
<p>Now, Felix has seen the Professor openly smile maybe two times beforehand. Once was after the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion, ages ago now. Once was after Dimitri’s coronation. Both were major, important events worthy of breaking her stoic expression. Her smile at Yuri, though? It comes from the simple sight of his elbow on the map, smeared with ink up past the forearm onto his impeccable clothing. </p>
<p>He can see Yuri laugh too, holding out his arm for Byleth to dab at it with a cloth, saying something that Felix can’t make out. And then, out of nowhere, Byleth’s mouth is on Yuri’s, pulling him close to her by an ink-soaked sleeve and weaving a hand in his lavender hair in a clumsy, impulsive kiss. After an initial surprised pause, Yuri responds, mirroring her strange, awkward enthusiasm with his own. For once, his normal poised body language actually lessens, replaced with an unsure delight. </p>
<p>“So, they finally got around to it.”</p>
<p>Dimitri’s large form appears in Felix’s periphery, his hair pulled back into a small ponytail, looking more rested and healthy than Felix has seen him in years. He even has a rare, slightly amused smile of his own on his face as he stands next to Felix, both of them watching Yuri tangle himself up in Byleth’s arms, knocking over the pot of ink entirely as they continue to kiss, uncaring. </p>
<p>Felix gives Dimitri a wary look. “You’re not angry that she’s making out with a gang leader?”</p>
<p>Dimitri shrugs. “I may not have been in my right mind for most of the year, but even I could tell that there was something there. I’m happy for them.”</p>
<p>“Besides,” he says, looking down at Felix, “Taking Enbarr tomorrow is the most dangerous thing we’ll do. There’s a high chance that some of us won’t make it out. I don’t blame them for taking their chances now.”</p>
<p>Felix clenches his hand into a fist. “Don’t you dare fall back into your suicidal rampage, boar. Not after you took responsibility for a country. <em> Our </em> country.” </p>
<p>“You know, Felix,” Dimitri replies with another warm uptick of his lips. “For once, I plan to live. But there’s nothing wrong with reminding people that you care for them. I find that actually helps.” His expression is slightly dreamy, and Felix immediately knows that the man is recalling Claude’s little stunt a few moons earlier. Ugh. </p>
<p>“Don’t expect any sappy words from me,” he grumbles. Dimitri actually laughs at that- a deeper version of his childhood one, not the crazed laugh of battlefield bloodlust. </p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t expect any words from you, don’t worry. I know that’s not how you operate.” </p>
<p>He lays a gloved hand on Felix’s shoulder, and for once, he doesn’t flinch away from it</p>
<p>“You speak with actions, Felix,” Dimitri says gently. “And you’ve shown me you care for me many times over through those. I can only hope to someday validate your faith through the actions of my own. But at least for now, before a time of great risk and danger, I can say thank you.” </p>
<p>Felix doesn’t know if the weight of Dimitri’s words are just keeping him from moving, but, for the first time in over a decade, he lets the king hug him. And if he lifts his arms to embrace Dimitri of his own volition? </p>
<p>Well. The only other people in the vicinity are otherwise occupied with maps, ink, and each other. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The nearby forest is cooler than the open fields of camp, with wide areas of shade and soft, slightly damp grass and moss patchworked across the ground. Felix finds a tree to prop himself up against, digging the almost-completed sweater out of his bag, and fumbles with his new needles a bit before starting the final rows. His vision focuses down to a pinpoint as he knits, racing the setting sun to finish before the light fades and his potential final night with Sylvain begins. </p>
<p>He’s so distracted with his hurrying that he doesn’t even notice the yarn running low until it’s too late. His needles slip, then fall as the remaining end of a stitch trails off, falling short halfway through a row. Felix frowns, and then digs through the bag to find more yarn. </p>
<p>He finds none left. </p>
<p>The queasiness that had been waiting in his stomach all day rises to his throat as he sits there, helplessly. The sweater rests beneath him, just inches away from completion, the hanging too-small remainder of thread marring the middle like an open wound. He clutches the Fraldarius wool in both hands, squeezing until the weave of the sweater bunches dangerously in his grip, as if he can leech the dye out of it. He doesn’t even know if the town it’s from is still standing, if the flower fields that colored it are burnt to ash, if the kind merchant who sold it to him is even still alive. Even if any of those were true, they were miles and miles away on the other side of the continent. </p>
<p>After years of near misses and false starts, it seems that the curse had appeared to yank the rug out from under him at the last moment, to keep him and Sylvain apart for good. </p>
<p>For the first time in a long, long while, Felix allows himself to miss Faerghus. He misses his father. He misses Glenn. He misses the feeling of potential and excitement that he had felt when he picked out the yarn, had begun the stupid, fruitless task of making the sweater. It hits him that all of that potential, all of those losses, might mean nothing come the next few days. The one potential he really had left was with Sylvain, and even that now seems impossible. </p>
<p>(He would probably die with it unfinished, left hanging like everything else he thought he cared about in his life.)</p>
<p>Felix puts his head against his knees, still holding the sweater, and finally, finally lets himself cry. </p>
<p>He doesn’t know how long the tears flow out of him, how long he sits there gasping for breath in between sobs, choking back both snot and a scream. The sweater seems to soak them all up with little effort and zero complaints, just bearing silent witness to his emotion like it always has. Eventually, enough time passes where, when he looks up with red-ringed eyes, he sees that night has fully set in. A full moon still provides a silvery light over the forest, but not much else. </p>
<p>A twig suddenly snaps behind Felix, and he jumps, reaching for his sword with trembling hands. “Who’s there?”</p>
<p>The Professor’s hair is the first color standing out from the shadows that catches his eye, followed by the glint of the gold medallion around her neck. She stands over his hunched figure, towering from this angle even with her short stature. Felix folds in on himself away from her, automatically ducking his tear-streaked face away. </p>
<p>Byleth, as usual, doesn’t say anything. Instead, she reaches into her cape with a gesture that he knows well, and pulls out a small ball to hand to him. </p>
<p>He realizes what it is when he takes it from her, feels a texture that he knows by heart and sees the familiar teal color. The ball of yarn that she passes him is an inexplicably perfect match to the sweater. </p>
<p>Felix doesn’t ask where she somehow found it; he’s too overcome, too torn up after what feels like hours of crying. He just holds the ball to his chest instead, and several more tears fall from his eyes to join the many that have congregated and dried on his cheeks.</p>
<p>The Professor hesitates for a second before lowering herself down to his level, sitting side-by-side with him in the grass. Slowly, stiffly, she extends an arm, wrapping it around his shoulders in an unsure gesture. </p>
<p>Felix isn’t used to many people touching him; hell, he actively avoids touching others himself, and he knows that Byleth feels similarly (not counting whatever the fuck she’d been doing with Yuri earlier). The arm around him is a little too bent, almost like a marionette’s segmented wooden arm being maneuvered by someone incredibly out of practice. For some reason, however, either because of his emotionally compromised state or because he intrinsically knows how much effort Byleth is putting into the gesture, he lets it happen, and does not move away. </p>
<p>Byleth keeps her arm around him, lets him awkwardly shuffle closer to her, and leans into his side to complete their own unique form of an embrace. </p>
<p>“Sometimes,” Felix says, “I’m not sure if you’re even entirely human.” His vocal cords feel as rubbed raw as his eyes. He lets them burn.</p>
<p>He knows that was the wrong thing to say the instant the words pass his lips, from the way that the Professor tenses up next to him. Her eyebrows fold together in a way that suggests anger, maybe disappointment? (The growing variety of emotions she’s been displaying on her previously porcelain mask of a face are hard to distinguish sometimes.) </p>
<p>“You’re not entirely wrong,” she finally says.</p>
<p>He looks up at her, surprised. “Really?”</p>
<p>“I’m cursed too, I think.” </p>
<p>Felix again doesn’t question how she knows what he’s thinking. Instead, he just watches as she ducks her head, choppy mint bangs falling around her face. She shakes it slightly to emphasize her hair. “You ever wonder how I got this magic dye job?”</p>
<p>“Honestly? I didn’t really try and think about your magic Goddess stuff much.” Felix raises and lowers his shoulders, letting his breathing settle back to something resembling normal. “It was your sword work that mattered to me.”</p>
<p>Byleth gives him one of her new sideways grins. </p>
<p>“That’s why I like you, Fraldarius. You’re like me. You don’t ask stupid questions.”</p>
<p>She leans her head back against the tree bark, looking up at the canopy, lost in thought. </p>
<p>“My heart doesn’t beat,” she says, still blankly looking skyward. “The only reason I’m alive is because the Goddess merged her powers with me, and it’ll probably keep me alive forever unless I rip whatever’s in my chest out of there. I’m stuck like this.” </p>
<p>She flips her arm around and motions for him to touch her pulse point on her wrist. He puts two fingers on the blue veins visible under the pale, thin skin, but feels nothing. Her skin is warm, sure, not the clammy cold of stone or a corpse, but the thrum of a pulse is utterly nonexistent. </p>
<p>“You don’t know how to fix it?”</p>
<p>“Nope. Dad died before he could tell me anything, Rhea went off the deep end; even <em> Sothis </em> didn’t know, back when I still heard from her. She’s gone now, too. I don’t know which version I prefer.” </p>
<p>She gives a very short laugh. It has an odd off-key tone that Felix doesn’t think he’d ever heard before. “Shit. You’re the first person I’ve told all that to.”</p>
<p>“I’m...I’m sorry, Professor.” </p>
<p>“Don’t be. You didn’t cause it. Besides, it gives me an objective to try and fix after this is all done. Yuri thinks he has some leads.”</p>
<p>She rubs at her temple, frowning slightly, then nudges the ball of yarn in his hands, and lights one of her palms up with a small spell, casting light across his sweater. “Well? Finish your work, Felix.”</p>
<p>Felix responds to the prompt that he heard so often at the Academy, and slowly starts to knit the final few rows, moving as if he were in a dream. <em> Was </em> this a dream? Would he wake up back at the monastery, seventeen again with a lap full of yarn? </p>
<p>(He doesn’t know if he’d be able to do anything different, even if he tried.)</p>
<p>“I’ll help you, you know,” he says as he works. “If we make it through this, I mean. I...owe you a lot. You don’t deserve a fate like that.”</p>
<p>Byleth looks down at his hands, contemplating as they move the needles. “My curse is going to be harder to figure out. I’m still going to try, though. It’s all I can do.”</p>
<p>“Yours, though,” she says, “Yours is made to be broken.” </p>
<p>She stops talking after this, just holds the light steady for him. Unlike with most people, silence with the Professor has always been a comforting presence, not an awkward one. The only sounds are the soft click of needles and the muted call-and-response of several songbirds in the distance. They surround him as he cleanly, calmly, powers through the last few rows. </p>
<p>Felix holds the completed sweater up to the moonlight and to Byleth’s small summoned one. After all this time, he feels like he should be fiercely satisfied, or excited, or have some other cathartic emotion exude from his subconscious. Instead, he just feels…calm. At peace. It was like finally readjusting a painting that had been hanging crooked for years, like realigning a cog in clockwork. </p>
<p>(Felix thinks it might be something approaching pride, but it wasn’t in any form he was used to. He decides that he can live with that.)</p>
<p>Byleth lowers her hand, extinguishing the light, and rests it on Felix’s shoulder instead. </p>
<p>“Go on,” she says. “Go give it to him.” </p>
<p>“All or nothing, I suppose,” Felix says, exhaling. In his hands, the sweater suddenly feels like it’s made of lead.</p>
<p>Byleth nods, then helps him up. His sore legs protest a little from being seated so long on the ground, but she steadies him when he wobbles. Together, they walk in silence back to the camp. </p>
<p>“That’s why I like you, Fraldarius,” she says again, right before they reach the populated areas and tents. “You’re like me. We’re both going out on our own terms.” </p>
<p>“Good night, Professor.”</p>
<p>“Good night, Felix. Good luck.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Felix doesn’t wait long to pull Sylvain away early from their camp’s dinner around the fire into their tent. He sits down on his bedroll to pull a hastily wrapped package out of his bag, and rests it in his lap while Sylvain joins him cross-legged on the ground, lanky legs folding up under him. Their knees touch in such a familiar imitation of the first time they’d spoken like this that it makes Felix want to pinch himself for the second time that evening to make sure that he wasn’t in a dream.</p>
<p>He thrusts the bundle unceremoniously at Sylvain. “This might be a little late...okay, it’s a lot late, but I wanted you to have it. So, here. I made you this.” </p>
<p>He watches Sylvain’s face intently, gut screwed up in anticipation as he unwraps the paper with a delicate hand. His stomach flips as Sylvain gasps at the sweater resting inside. </p>
<p>“I thought you forgot about this,” he says, lifting the sweater as if it were made of spun sugar instead of sturdy Faerghan wool; like it could dissolve in his hands at any moment. “Goddess, I can’t believe you actually <em> remembered</em>.” </p>
<p>“Of course I remembered,” Felix says. He twists his hands together in his lap. “I...started it back when we were kids, but I...I didn’t pick it back up for a while. The collar’s not right, and there’s a couple holes-” </p>
<p>Sylvain isn’t listening to his stammered critiques, instead running his fingers along the wool, seemingly wanting to memorize every stitch with the pads of his fingers, looking at it with such reverence that it makes him want to squirm. </p>
<p>“What made you want to give it to me now?” </p>
<p>Felix huffs out a laugh. “Well, we could all die tomorrow, for one thing.” </p>
<p>Sylvain chuckles too. “Surprisingly, I’d really like to avoid that.” </p>
<p>Felix takes a breath. All or nothing, he tells himself. All or nothing. </p>
<p>“Well, also,” he says, “I finally wanted to see if the curse was true.” </p>
<p>Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “What, that I wouldn’t like you after you spent, what is it, ten or so years making me a sweater?” </p>
<p>A nod meets that, quick and unsure. Sylvain finally sets the sweater down, wrapping it into a neat roll. He takes Felix’s hands in yet another dizzyingly similar moment. </p>
<p>“Felix Fraldarius,” he says, “I told you, I could never stop liking you…<em>loving</em> you even if I tried. A fake curse isn’t going to take that from me.” </p>
<p>All of Felix’s breath leaves his body in a punched out thrust as he reels back physically from those two sentences. He has to remove his hands from Sylvain’s to steady himself on the ground. Oh. <em> Oh. </em> Every word, every conversation they’d ever shared comes rushing back to him, shining like a beacon through a completely different lens. </p>
<p>“You...love me?”</p>
<p>Sylvain drags a hand across his face sheepishly. “Yeah, I, uh, I do. Of course I do.” His arms cross and uncross in front of his body as if unsure how to arrange himself. “Like you said, we could all fucking die tomorrow, so no time like the present, right? I love you, Fe. I think, in some way, I always have, even if I didn’t know it for way too long. I know you don’t feel the same, but-”</p>
<p>Felix’s brain finally manages to force his mouth to work, and he cuts Sylvain’s nervous excuse off mid-sentence. “You’re such an idiot.” He jabs a finger at the sweater still resting in a flustered Sylvain’s lap. “You think I’d spend all this time on that if I didn’t love you back? That’s real dumb, even for you.” </p>
<p>The resulting expression that comes to Sylvain’s face is so bright that it makes Felix’s heart want to burst. He gives a shaky, but delighted laugh as he brushes a fallen piece of dark hair behind Felix’s ear. “We’re both real idiots, aren’t we? Dramatic assholes, too.” </p>
<p>Felix can’t help himself from laughing a bit too, as a pressure that he didn’t realize had been resting in his chest releases and drifts away, leaving behind a weightlessness that he hasn’t felt in years. </p>
<p>“Idiots with shit timing,” he agrees, and lets Sylvain lean his forehead down to touch his own as they laugh at themselves, replacing the sobering stress that the war had filled their tent with something lighter, almost intoxicatingly so. </p>
<p>They finally lean back from each other, Sylvain clutching the sweater to his chest. “I’d try it on right now, but, uh, I’m a little grungy.”</p>
<p>“Don’t get dirt on my hard work, Gautier,” Felix chides, still smiling. His face almost hurts from the emotion; he hasn’t held the expression for so long in years, and it aches on his face with a delicious burn not unlike a muscle on the first training session after an extended break.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll wear it to the victory feast,” Sylvain says, decisive with excitement. “But you’ve gotta promise to make it there with me.” </p>
<p>Felix has kept all of his promises to Sylvain so far, but he has never felt as strongly as this time, has never finally had such a powerful reason or reward. He nods as Sylvain folds the sweater into his pack with a grin. </p>
<p>“I promise.”</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>To his credit, Felix tries this time, he really does. Fate has other plans. Fate, and about six different knights and dark mages who had all landed hits on him in the maze of the Imperial palace hallways.</p>
<p>At least he had protected Annette, he thinks to himself, had cut a path through the enemies attempting to strike her down before she could operate the magic ballista to take out the throne room archers. At least he accomplished that much. Every person who had tried to make their way to her was now spread out behind him in bloody pieces, a trail of bodies left like breadcrumbs as he made his way to the throne room entrance. </p>
<p>He doesn’t make it through the doors to meet everyone as they cheer their victory, though. His legs, to his annoyance, decide to stop working. The only reason that he remains upright is because of the half-broken pillar at his back and his trusty rapier bracing him against it like a cane. </p>
<p>Felix is twenty-four years old. Felix has been in an innumerable amount of battles. He has killed an innumerable amount of people. He has nearly <em> been </em> killed several times himself, and is intimately familiar with the different injuries his body was able to handle. He likes to think that he is somewhat of an expert in this. </p>
<p>It is precisely because of this that he's pretty sure he’s going to die there, as a smear against Imperial marble, exhausted and most likely alone. Once upon a time, he would have been fine with it. Once upon a time, he almost would have embraced it. To his surprise, he doesn’t want to now. He has a reason not to. </p>
<p>And, also to his surprise, that very redheaded reason appears right in the middle of his musings, rounding the corner. </p>
<p>“Felix!” Sylvain shouts. The Lance of Ruin clatters out of his hands onto a fallen Great Knight, but he leaves it behind, rushing over to grab Felix by the arms. “I was so worried! Are you hurt? Did any of them get to you- oh, Goddess.” </p>
<p>Ah yes, there it is. He had noticed the large axe wound on Felix’s side, surrounded by the branching starbursts of several lightning spells that had met their marks, not to mention the way that his sword arm dangled at an unnatural angle against his side. </p>
<p>“Yeah,” Felix manages to say, wryly, “I’d say they got a couple hits in.” </p>
<p>“Saints, Fe, did you fight the whole hallway?” Sylvain tries to pry away his left hand, which is pressed tight against the worst of the wound, applying as much pressure as he can.</p>
<p>“Not all at once, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he grunts. “Annie got a couple too. She’s okay, right?”</p>
<p>“What? Yeah, she’s fine, she’s with Petra, not a scratch on her, but don’t worry about that, what about <em> you </em>?” </p>
<p>“What about me?” </p>
<p>“Fe, you can barely <em> stand</em>, here, give me your arm, I’ll get you back-”</p>
<p>Felix hisses in pain as Sylvain tries to lift him away from the marble. “Not gonna happen, Syl. I don’t think I can make it anywhere at this point.” </p>
<p>Sylvain looks desperate, his expression scrunched and pleading. Felix hates that he has to see him like this right before he goes, covered in soot and scared out of his mind with worry, attempting to pull his gauntlets off with his teeth. </p>
<p>“Should’ve known this would happen after I gave you that fucking sweater,” he pants. His hair falls loose and grimy around his face, having lost his hair tie somewhere after the fourth soldier he killed. The hand staunching the flow of blood on his side is starting to slip, shaking as the adrenaline leaves his system. He takes a shuddering, painful breath and leans back more onto the pillar to stay standing. “Should’ve known that a stupid curse would get me in the end.” </p>
<p>Sylvain finishes yanking off his gauntlets and gloves and his hands glow with his meager healing magic as they press against Felix’s tattered armor. Sylvain has never been a great healer, Felix knows, and his face is already beginning to show the signs of overexertion, his magic tapped out from the battle. He soldiers on though, sweat beading along his hairline as he struggles to maintain concentration. </p>
<p>“Don’t say things like that,” Sylvain says, face strained and hysteria tinging his words, “No way in hell that Felix Fraldarius would ever let a curse stop him, huh? Right? You’re going to be just fine, Mercedes is right over in the next hall, she’ll-”</p>
<p>“Sylvain.” Felix manages to force the words out through gritted teeth and what he’s pretty sure is a punctured lung. “It’s too late for me. Save the spells for someone else.”</p>
<p>“<em>Bullshit! </em> ” The magic flares up in a more pronounced glow as Sylvain pushes another spell into him. “Don’t <em> say </em> things like that, not after you go and make some grand gesture, you’re not getting out of having feelings this easy, you stubborn, <em> ridiculous- </em>”</p>
<p>The open wounds on his side have finally sealed up, but Felix can feel the internal rips in his organs and crushed bones still aching. A bit of blood runs out of his mouth as he coughs, and Sylvain reaches a hurried hand up to wipe it away. </p>
<p>Felix lets his face rest in the palm of the man he loves, because screw it, he’s about to die, he might as well feel that touch one last time. “I hope...I hope the sweater fits.” Breathing is getting harder now, and the words come out with a wheeze that would nearly double him over if Sylvain wasn’t holding him up. “Hope it’s not cursed enough for that, at least.” </p>
<p>Sylvain wipes some ash from his eyebrow with a thumb, his last stores of magic spent. He’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful, Felix thinks, even when he’s battered and terrified. He wills his vision to stop spinning, just to keep looking at his face. </p>
<p>“Hey Fe,” Sylvain says, softly, barely heard over the post-battle din and the ringing in his ears. “You know what the best way to break a curse is?” </p>
<p>Felix does know. For once, he doesn’t hate that he does. </p>
<p>He pulls together enough strength to nod, and raises himself up to meet Sylvain face to face. He manages one fleeting press of their lips together, chapped and dry, before he tilts his head up to capture Sylvain’s expression- just one last time, he thinks, for posterity. </p>
<p>He doesn’t get the chance. The second their mouths separate, Felix’s world promptly goes black, and his body collapses like a doll bracketed in Sylvain’s arms.</p>
<p>The last thing he hears before drifting off into nothingness are Sylvain’s panicked shouts for Mercedes echoing through the hallway. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Felix wakes in an unfamiliar bed, surrounded by the all-too-familiar sounds of a medical bay. He goes to scrub at his eyes, squinting through the glow of many lighting globes, and feels his right shoulder burn at the sudden movement. In his growing lucidity, he examines the bandages wrapping around the majority of his ribs and running up to circle his shoulder and upper arm, splinted tight in Mercedes’s unmistakeable pristine work. They stretch and pull at his skin as he moves, the mild surface irritation covering a much deeper, solid ache in his entire body, but he feels no telltale sharp point of a broken bone, no intense punch of a stab wound. All things told, he’d probably had worse, he figures. </p>
<p>He finally wipes the sleep from his eyes, hand moving automatically to push back his hair before realizing that something, well, <em> two </em>somethings are different. </p>
<p>The first: someone has arranged his hair into a neat braid and rinsed it clean of the blood and soot he remembers weighing it down during the battle. His fingers travel the length of the braid, reaching the end, where it is tied off neatly in a familiar braided cord. He grasps it tight in one fist as he takes in the second thing.</p>
<p>The second something is, of course, a very mussed head of very red hair laying on folded arms at his bedside. Its owner is slumped forward in his chair with his arms and head resting on Felix’s mattress, almost touching his left knee. </p>
<p>Sylvain has a few days’ worth of ruddy stubble growing in on his face, a fading bruise along his cheekbone, and, most importantly, a very familiar shade of teal wool covering his broad torso. His head stirs as Felix shifts in bed to sit up. </p>
<p>“Hey,” Sylvain says, voice a little gravely from sleep. “You’re awake, finally. Thought you were going to go and break our promise there for a second.” </p>
<p><em> “Hello,” </em> Felix wants to say back, <em> “I love you.”  </em></p>
<p>
  <em> “I’m sorry.” </em>
</p>
<p><em> “I would do it all again to keep you all safe.” </em> </p>
<p>He focuses so hard on holding all those words back under his tongue that when he opens his mouth to respond, the only other thing that he can focus on comes out.</p>
<p>“The right sleeve is too short,” Felix says. </p>
<p>His voice catches dry in his throat from disuse, and he coughs, looking up from the sweater to find Sylvain already pressing a cup of water into his hands. He takes a few cautious sips, careful not to overdo it. It is surprisingly clean, even cold, a rarity for the past few years with the campaign’s movement to the south. He wonders where they found it, or if it’s undergone magical purification, and if so, what resources were expended to make that happen. </p>
<p>The brief detour into his mental evaluation of Enbarr’s water sources is interrupted by Sylvain stretching out his arms to compare them to one another in front of Felix. </p>
<p>Sylvain makes a small noise of surprise, as if just noticing the nearly inch-long (seriously, Felix is going to get Ingrid’s fucking pegasus back for that one day) difference in the cuffs. “Well, huh. I hadn’t noticed.” </p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Felix finally says, not wanting to explore the myriad of things he’s sorry <em> for </em>. “I should’ve hemmed the bottom too, it’s going to fray-”</p>
<p>“Felix,” Sylvain says, now seated on the side of the bed. He taps his forehead with a finger. “Look at me, not the sweater. Does it look good on <em> me</em>?” He holds out his arms a little from his sides, swinging them back and forth. </p>
<p>It’s too tight, for one thing, Felix wants to say, because he made the shoulders for a sixteen-year-old’s measurements, not a twenty-six-year-old paladin’s muscular form. He lingers on how it stretches across Sylvain’s pectorals, how the shoulder seams pull a bit inward, how the color looks against his skin. He finally brings himself to look up at his face, expectant and soft. </p>
<p>“It looks perfect on you,” he answers, truthfully. </p>
<p>Sylvain holds up one of Felix’s hands and kisses the bandaged knuckles, yet another piece of his body that seems to have been broken and restored. “Then, it’s perfect. Just like its maker.”</p>
<p>It’s the easiest, most natural thing in the world for Felix to reach up next to wrap his arms around his neck, as far as his limited range of mobility could take him, and it seems just as natural for Sylvain to lower himself to fit into the embrace, bending like a willow to slot them together. It is even easier for Felix to kiss him in this position, to open Sylvain’s mouth up with his own and lose himself in the feeling. He wants to pour years of anger, longing, passion, into the kiss, but it is surprisingly gentle, almost sweet. </p>
<p>He finds that this is the one type of sweet that he’ll tolerate. He wants to tolerate it again, and again, and again, if Sylvain lets him. </p>
<p>He does.</p>
<p>Mercedes returns to Felix’s bedside a few hours later for his latest round of bandage changes to find Sylvain propped up against several pillows, squeezed into the hospital bed with Felix fast asleep against him. Even in slumber, his hand remains fisted tight into Sylvain’s sweater, like he never intends on letting go. </p>
<p>He doesn’t. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Felix finds the time to knit Sylvain three more sweaters in the five years following the war, in the quiet moments in between rebuilding their territories and traveling to council meetings in Fhirdiad. He finds that it is much easier to measure patterns for them when their intended recipient is so often sprawled across a nearby sofa with a book, seated across from him in a carriage, or sleeping on his stomach next to him in their bed. </p>
<p>His first is a cream-colored solid thing with a chunky turtleneck, made to fend off the biting Northern cold the first winter they both spend readjusting to their homeland. The next, a blue and red striped piece that Sylvain wears so often around the manor that year that the maids joke it should be the new flag of the combined Gautier-Fraldarius lands. The last is an intricate green and tan design, patterned in a thick, complicated style that a delighted Srengi merchant teaches Felix when he notices his knitting needles in his bag during a diplomatic visit. He tells him that it’s a traditional courting pattern, supposedly used by young lovers in their region. </p>
<p>Sylvain laughs heartily when he says this, touching his new wedding ring with a smirk, and thanks the merchant for persuading his husband to finally court him properly. </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>One night, Sylvain enters their bedroom to find Felix in his usual place on the sofa by the fireplace, face solid in concentration as he deftly moves a smaller set of needles through soft yellow wool. He leans over to rest his chin on Felix’s shoulder and places a cup of tea at his side. </p>
<p>“Another sweater, Fe?” He teases, fingering the tight stitches of a sleeve. It is small and delicate, only a little larger than his thumb. “I hate to break it to you, but this might be too small for me.” </p>
<p>Felix pauses his movements to lower the tiny sweater to his lap. He responds after a lingering second. “It’s not for you.”</p>
<p>Sylvain frowns, mind running through possible options. “Is it for Heather from the kitchen staff? Did she already have her baby? I thought she wasn’t due for a few more months.”</p>
<p>“It’s not for her.” Felix’s face is set, determined, but a growing flush independent from the room’s cozy heat begins to creep across his cheeks.</p>
<p>“For one of Mercedes and Annette’s kids, then?”</p>
<p>“It’s not for them either.” </p>
<p>Felix lays down his needles. He moves one of his hands to his abdomen, reaching the other hand over to Sylvain’s, and the realization hits Sylvain with all the suddenness and surprise of shattering glass. </p>
<p>He barely remembers to set down his own cup of tea before he collapses on his knees next to a seated Felix with eyes as wide as saucers. He allows his shaking hand to be guided to Felix’s stomach. </p>
<p>“Felix, are you…?” </p>
<p>Felix just nods. His small smile isn’t even broken as he quickly yanks the pile of knitting off of his lap, setting it to the side as Sylvain’s eyes immediately start welling up. “Don’t get tears on our kid’s first sweater, Gautier.” </p>
<p>He leans forward to press his lips to a tear working its way down Sylvain’s face. Sylvain turns his head up to catch his husband’s mouth in a slightly damp kiss, and hiccups out a laugh through his crying as he presses their foreheads together.</p>
<p>“So much for a curse, huh?” He asks. </p>
<p>Felix rubs the familiar uneven collar of Sylvain’s sweater between a thumb and forefinger. In the firelight, the teal is just as vibrant as ever. He smiles.</p>
<p>“We’ve never let it stop us before.” </p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The first generation of the new Gautier-Fraldarius family has seven children in total: four birthed by their father and three more adopted over the years. By what some could only call an act of divine intervention from the Goddess, pure dumb luck, or both, not a single child is born with a Crest from either of their parents.</p>
<p>Instead, each of them receives a sweater. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all so much again for reading and for all your kudos, bookmarks, and comments! If you liked this work, feel free to check out some of my other pieces, too! I’m currently working on two modern AUs that should be updating on a more regular basis now that this is finished. If you’d like to read anything else set in this universe, let me know :) </p>
<p>And, as always, an incredible amount of thanks to Taryn for her constant help and hype while I was working through writing this. You’re the best!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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